Barn Field Manyokh, Plot 4 C, 1907. 
81 
Average 
Percentages in root as pulled 
weight 
Dry 
matter 
Reducing 
sugar 
Cane 
sugar 
Nitro- 
gen 
Ash 
Ordinary roots . 
Lb. 
3-78 
12-24 
0-214 
8-06 
0-104 
0-8.63 
Seed roots. 
3-87 
12-23 
0-363 
7-05 
0-090 
0-935 
The roots were of about the same average weight and con- 
tained the same proportion of water and dry matter, but in the 
roots run to seed less of the dry matter consisted of the really 
valuable constituent — the sugar, the difference amounting to 
one-eighth of the whole. The seed roots contained rather 
more reducing sugar and less nitrogen, and this marks the fact 
that the formation of top is accompanied by the conversion of 
cane into reducing sugar, wliich together with soluble nitrogen 
compounds is moved out of the root to form the seed head. 
Putting aside their indigestible fibrous nature, the seed roots 
thus contain less food than those which have not bolted. 
( A. D. Hall. 
Rotlianisted Experimental Station, 
Harpenden. 
AMERICAN MEAT EXPORTS. 
The growing volume of the imports of meat into the United 
Kingdom, and the predominance which the United States still 
holds in our markets as a purveyor of live animals, dead meat, 
and meat products, justifies attention being directed in this 
Journal to the very elaborate inquiry recently concluded by 
Mr. Holmes, the chief of the Division of “ Foreign Markets ” 
in the United States Department of Agriculture. In this 
report he publishes his conclusions as to the meat production, 
meat consumption, and export surplus of his own country. 
Great changes have been effected in the dimensions and the 
origin of our oversea meat imports since this (iuestion was the 
subject of detailed dissection in these columns twenty years 
ago. The Board of Agriculture assure us there is no evidence 
of any diminution in our home supplies of meat. Nevertheless 
they do not expand, as do the numbers of our consumers, and a 
larger meat ration is only secured to us by the growth of 
imports. The Agricultural Returns of 1906 indeed makes it 
plain that we receive Hilly twice as much dead meat per head 
VOL. 68. G 
