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VL — On tlie Manvfacture of Sugar from Beet- Root. By John 

 Wilson, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., &c. (late Professor of Agriculture 

 in the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester). 



Section I. 



" The cultivation of the root for this purpose in France, Belgium^ 

 or Germany, and the extent to which high manuring affects its 

 saccharine content s.^^ 



The original type of our garden and field beet, or mangold- 

 wurzel, is the Beta maritima, or sea-beet, an indigenous plant, 

 found growing wild on many parts of the sea-coast, especially 

 where an argillaceous formation borders the sea line. In such 

 cases it possesses a somewhat flesh}^ root, a tall branching 

 stem 3 to 4 feet high, with narrow dark-green leaves, which in 

 many places are gathered and eaten readily as a pot-herb. The 

 cultivated varieties are the B. Jiortensis, called also B. cycla or 

 Chard beet (which is cultivated for its leaves alone, the central part 

 or midrib being very fleshy, and considered, when cooked, a deli- 

 cacy), and the B. vulgaris, which comprises the red beet of our 

 gardens and the white or Silesian beet, both of which are well 

 known as containing a large quantity of sugar. The variety 

 with which we are best acquainted, the mangold-wurzel, has been 

 supposed to be the result of a cross between these two, and thus 

 possesses certain physical characteristics of them. As the object 

 of this paper is not to treat on the cultivation of mangold-wurzel 

 generally, but merely specially in its relations with the manufac- 

 ture of sugar, we need only mention that there are several dif- 

 ferent varieties of this mangold-wurzel, which are grown indis- 

 criminately in most counties in England. Up to the present 

 time but little attention has been paid to their relative saccharine 

 properties ; their feeding values and their suitability for different 

 soils seem to be the only results of the imperfect investigations 

 to which they have been hitherto submitted. On the Continent, 

 however, the necessities of the people brought the root promi- 

 nently into notice, some forty years ago, as being an indigenous 

 source from which that sugar, so necessary to the comforts of life, 

 could be obtained, which by the Continental Decree of Napoleon 

 they were debarred from procuring from the customary sources, 

 the cane-growing islands of the Atlantic and Pacific. This in- 

 dustry, called into existence by the arbitrary power of the then 

 ruler of the Continent, and belonging entirely to the present cen- 

 tury, has been so widely distributed, and so largely carried out, 

 that its condition is far more advanced, as a scientific manufac- 

 ture, than that of the extraction of sugar from the cane, w^hich 

 dates some centuries back. In its early days it had much to con- 

 tend against ; our acquaintance with organic chemistry was very 



