Sugar-Beet Cnllloatlon in Aush-ia. 
339 
particularly good qualities on analysis.' The weight of the roots 
selected for mothers should be about the average of the best 
sugar-beets, from 20 to 24 ounces. Smaller beets than these 
would show a higher percentage of sugar, but it is not wise to 
produce a race of small beets by selecting the seed from the 
very smallest and richest beets grown. Tlie size of the " mo- 
thers" having been decided, the beets are next selected for 
their shape and external appearance. Those regular in shape 
and smooth in external form are preferred. Hoots of irregular 
shape, or with more than one tap-root, should be rejected. 
The beets to be preserved for seed ai-e harvested with unusual 
care to avoid injury. The neck is not cut away, but the leaves 
are removed by cutting off the stems without injuring the neck 
of the beet. The clamping should be of such a nature as to 
entirely protect the beets from frost, and yet prevent their 
growth until the spring. The beets are removed at an early 
date in the spring, and are immediately subjected to analysis 
for the final selection. 
At Wischau, I found a prominent feature was made of the 
cultivation of beet for seed. The roots intended for this pur- 
pose are chosen every year in a special laboratory, with the 
guidance afforded by the polarisation of the juice. Well-formed 
roots are first selected in the fields in the autumn, and are again 
examined in the spring, when they are weighed. Any root of 
less than 1^ lb. is rejected. With an instrument not unlike a 
cheese-borer a small cylindrical piece is taken out of each beet 
weighing over H lb., and its specific gravity tested. 
About 40 per cent, pass this test, and are sent for more com- 
plete examination to the laboratory. There another but larger 
cylindrical piece is bored obliquely out of the beet, and its 
juice is examined with the polariscope to ascertain what per- 
centage of sugar it contains. From the best of those with a 
high polarisation, the roots weighing over If lb. are selected 
to form the very best class, " Supra elite." 
In 1890, 18,068 beets were selected at Wischau by the 
specific gravity test for further examination, two chemists and 
fourteen other persons being employed in this operation. Of this 
number of roots 333, or 1-84 per cent., were classed as " Supra 
elite"; 0,865, or 37"977 per cent., as " Elite," and used for the 
cultivation of the finest seed ; 6,710, or 37'10 per cent., as second 
' Messrs. Kabbethge and Giesecke, the famous cultivators of the Klein- 
Wanzleben variety, who have been growing' beet fur seed for upwards of 
thirty year's, state that in 1889-90 they tested 2,782, ."^OO roots, from which 
they selected .%0'13 roots, equal to 0-1 per cent., for seed-growing purposes. 
