82 
Sugar-Beets and Beetroot Distillation. 
materials, from which sugar cannot be produced. It matters 
little to him if the sugar in beetroots is associated with such 
an amount of saline matter or albumen which would sorely try 
the patience of the sugar manufacturer, and materially affect 
his profits. 
When roots are grown with much manure, they are generally 
richer in saline and albuminous compounds than roots raised 
upon comparatively poor and unmanured soils. In a country 
where rents are high, it appears to me more profitable to employ 
manure, and to produce rather a heavy crop of beets of fair average 
quality than to abstain from its use and to grow a small crop rich 
in sugar. If the sole object for which the beets are grown is to 
produce sugar from them, it is of course to the interest of the 
manufacturer of sugar to be supplied by the neighbouring farmers 
with roots grown on unmanured land, as rich in sugar and as 
free from albuminous and saline compounds as they can be grown. 
Roots of that description do not, as a rule, yield a heavy crop 
per acre, and hence it may not pay the farmer as well to grow 
a small crop of superior sugar-producing quality, as it will pay 
him to grow a heavy crop of not quite so good a quality. The 
distiller of beetroot spirit can afford to give a better price for 
inferior roots than the manufacturer of sugar, because the im- 
purities in beets of an inferior quality do not interfere with the 
production of alcohol, whereas they are highly objectionable to 
the sugar manufacturer, inasmuch as they greatly reduce the 
amount of crystallized sugar which can be extracted from the 
roots. The interests of the farmer and distiller are, therefore, in 
harmony to a greater extent than are the interests of the farmer 
and the manufacturer of sugar. 
Mr. Campbell, for the last two seasons, has been carrying 
out on a large scale the experiment to grow sugar-beets and 
to convert the crop entirely into spirit and cattle-food. In a 
few years, when, no doubt, other distilleries will have been 
established in other parts of the country, we shall be able 
to form a more correct estimate of the profit that may be 
derived from beetroot distillation than we can at present. In 
the absence of accurate data it is vain to calculate what the 
profits are likely to be, and I therefore abstain from giving cur- 
rency to the statements which have been put forward in order to 
show the extremely profitable character of beetroot distillation. 
With a view of giving persons interested in beetroot distillation 
some idea of the probable cost of establishing a beetroot distillery, 
1 may observe that the produce of 500 to 600 acres requires the i 
following machinery, which, according to Messrs. Savalle's cata- 
logue, costs in round numbers 10,000Z. : — 
