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On the Chemistry of Silesian Sugar-Bects. 
Many of the constituents of beet-root are present only in very 
minute quantities, and their determination in exact quantities is 
of little or no practical utility. 
In the following analytical investigation of a number of beet- 
roots grown in England under a variety of conditions, to which 
attention will be directed presently, I have therefore not con- 
sidered it necessary to determine quantitatively all the various 
constituents of sugar-beets, but have confined myself to ascertain 
with accuracy the amount of — 
1. Water. 
2. Crystallizable sugar. 
3. Pectinous substances. 
4. Albuminous or nitrogenous compounds. 
5. Crude vegetable fibre (exhausted pulp). 
6. Mineral matter (ash). 
With regard to the method employed for determining the pre- 
ceding constituents, the reader is referred to a paper of mine 
' On the Composition of Orange Globe Mangolds ' {vide ' Journal 
of the Royal Agricultural Society,' vol. i., 2nd series, part ii., 1866), 
in which he will find fully described the various steps in conduct- 
ing the analysis of roots. The same plan there described has 
been adopted in the present instance with one exception. Instead 
of determining the amount of sugar by the fermentation process, 
as in the case of the mangold analysis, a standard copper solu- 
tion was employed for determining the amount of sugar in all 
the beet analyses. The process known as the copper-test for 
sugar need not be described here in detail, as it may be found, 
with all the requisite precautions necessary to be observed to 
secure accurate results, in any text-book treating of quantitative 
analysis. 
In each case two separate water-determinations were made, 
and in most cases the sugar was also determined in two or more 
separate portions of the beet-juice, the specific gravity of which 
was likewise ascertained in most instances. 
The roots submitted by me to analysis were supplied by Mr, 
James Duncan, of Mincing Lane, a gentleman who, as many of 
the readers of the leading daily journals and the agricultural 
papers may remember, has lately erected, at a cost exceeding 
6000/., works and machinery for the extraction of the sugar 
from beet-roots, within a few yards of the railway station at 
Lavenham, in Suffolk. 
Mr. Duncan last season received about 800 tons of the sugar- 
beet from a body of intelligent Suffolk farmers residing in the 
neighbourhood of Lavenham, amongst whom he distributed the 
seed of two varieties of Silesian beet, the kind most approved on, 
the Continent for its sugar-producing qualities. 
