74 
Sugar-Beets and Beetroot Distillation. 
state mangolds, when given to sheep or cattle, not only do them 
no good, but they act medicinally, causing stock to scour. 
Hence mangolds have to be stored in pits, and, speaking 
generally, are not in a fit condition to be consumed either by 
sheep or cattle before the middle of January. Sugar-beets, on 
the other hand, come earlier to maturity, and in fair average 
seasons may be consumed as cattle food with advantage, as early 
as October. A few acres of sugar-beet, I cannot help thinking, 
would supply more solid feeding matter, and food of a more 
nutritious character, than a good many acres of watery and 
spongy, tasteless and innutritious, stubble-turnips. It appears a 
very desirable thing on many farms to have the command of good 
autumn or early winter food, and not to consume the mangold or 
swede crop too soon, and sugar-beets would be useful, I believe, 
in bridging over the period when common mangolds cannot be 
given to stock with safety. 
Beetroot distillation. — In connection with the manufacture of 
sugar, the distillation of spirit is frequently carried on in con- 
tinental beetroot-sugar factories. In France alone there are about 
500 beetroot distilleries, and in Belgium and Germany also the 
work of distilling spirit is often combined with the manufacture 
of beetroot-sugar. The most profitable return for the molasses 
produced in refining and crystallizing beetroot-sugar, appears to 
be realised by their conversion into spirit ; and hence we find, 
on the continent, attached to many beetroot-sugar factories, distil- 
leries in which molasses are thus utilized. The combination of 
these two branches of industry, moreover, has the advantage that, 
in seasons when the proportion of sugar in the roots is too poor 
to yield much profit to the manufacturer, if he extracts the sugar 
in the beets, he may, with greater profit, utilize the beet-crop by 
fermenting the sliced beets or their sugary juice, and obtain, by 
distillation from the fermented materials, the spirit which has 
been produced by the act of fermentation. Again, when the 
market price of spirit Is high and that of sugar low, it may, even 
in good seasons, pay better to make spirit instead of sugar from 
beetroots, and hence beetroot distilling is at times vigorously 
pursued in France, whilst the manufacture of sugar is stopped for 
a season. Indeed, it is maintained by the advocates of beetroot 
distilleries, that the distillation of spirit Is on the whole a more 
profitable business than the manufacture of beetroot-sugar ; and 
in consequence of this opinion prevailing in France, a good many 
sugar- factories in that country have of late years been entirely 
converted into distilleries. 
In comparison with the manufacture of beetroot-sugar, the 
operations that have to be carried out in beetroot distilleries are 
very simple. 
