146 



Manufacture of Sugar from Beet-Root. 



twenty-four hours in water, to enable the germinating process to 

 be set up by the seed much more readily than if it had to rely on 

 the soil for its necessary supply of moisture. This practice, how- 

 ever, is affected by the soil and also by the season. If the soil is of a 

 light porous character, and the weather dry, it would perhaps be 

 injurious to the germinating seed or to the young plant to be 

 thus accelerated in its growth, as without a continued supply of 

 moisture it could not exist ; under ordinary circumstances, how- 

 ever, it advances their growth considerably. 



In the vicinity of large towns, where the land is generally more 

 subdivided, the facility of disposing of the beet to the sugar fac- 

 tories, and of obtaining a large supply of ready-made manure in 

 return, induces the cultivators to grow the crop year after year 

 successively on the same ground. This system may be carried 

 on for many years with a certain amount of success, but, sooner 

 or later, the bad policy of such a practice is shown by a great 

 deterioration in the crops, both in quantity and in saccharine pro- 

 perties — the one resulting, probably, from the attacks of insects 

 peculiar to the plant, which year after year have been bred in the 

 soil, and increased with each succeeding crop ; the other due, 

 probably, to some fungus or vegetable parasite, feasting on the 

 diminishing vitality of a plant debilitated by being grown con- 

 stantly on the same soil. In 1846 a disease of this character was 

 noticed, both by Kiihlmann, in Belgium, and by Payen and 

 Crespel, in France.* The leaves of the plant became withered — 

 reddish-brown spots appeared upon the skin, penetrating the 

 interior of the plant — the flesh became hard and woody — the juice 

 dried up, and showed an alkaline instead of an acid reaction — 

 and the sugar was viscous, and would not crystallize. The fungus 

 appeared to be very similar to that of the potato disease. 



The after operations consist in singling out the plants to certain 

 distances when they are about two to three weeks old — in filling 

 up vacant spaces and carefully keeping the land clean — and in 

 pulling up those which run to seed. Analysis has shown us 

 that the portion of the root exposed to the light contains less 

 sugar than that which is buried ; it would therefore be, no doubt, 

 advantageous to mould up the roots after the last hoeing, and 

 thus protect them from it. 



In some parts of Germany and in Belgium it is the practice to 

 sow the seed in a separate piece, and thence transplant the young 

 plants to the field. By this method, in North Germany and in 

 Russia, where the seasons are more rigorous than with us, they are 

 enabled to accelerate the time of harvest by fully a month or six 

 weeks, a matter of great importance to the preservation of a root 

 so susceptible of frost as the beet. Kochlin states that it saves 



Annales de 1' Agriculture, torn, xvi, (1847). 



