— 45 — 
and the tolerance of the beet plant for alkali, a means of keeping 
down, or removing, considerable quantities of alkali from the soil, 
especially as I hoped to find that the plant would, in the presence of 
so large a supply of soda salts, take up a large percentage of them. 
I expected to find this the case in both the roots and leaves — to a 
greater extent, of course, in the leaves than in the roots. It was with 
this idea that I planted chards, but I was disappointed in the re- 
sults of this experiment, for they made no such crop of leaves as they 
should have made, and they were not as high in percentage of ash 
as the leaves of the beets. The experiment with the chards was so 
evidently a failure, in regard to its primary object, that I practi- 
cally abandoned it. 
The table also contains the results obtained from fodder beets. 
The crop of roots is usually very much larger, while the percentage 
of ash in the fresh crop is rather less. In regard to the leaves, their 
ratio, by weight, to the roots being much lower, amount to about the 
same on a basis of 2 tons of fodder beets to 1 ton of sugar beets. The 
percentage of ash is quite the same in the two classes, and the min- 
eral constituents removed by such crops would be about equal. The 
roots of a crop of fodder beets removes, because of their high ton- 
nage, from two to three times the amount of ash constituents that 
is removed by a crop of sugar beets. 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE ASH IN THE BEET.' 
The sugar and dry matter in the respective thirds of the beet, 
numbered from the top downward, have been given. Two series of 
experiments were made with the Kleinwanzlebener and Vilmorin 
varieties, to see whether we could establish any difference between 
the ash content of the thirds, and also its value. The series con- 
sisted of six beets each ; the Kleinwanzlebener samples were freshly 
dug, but the Vilmorin sample was taken from the cellar. The aver- 
age percentage of sugar in the Kleinwanzlebener variety was 12.70 
per cent.; in the Vilmorin, 14.90. The percentage of dry matter in 
these series is given in detail under the caption, “ Distribution of the 
Dry Matter in Beets,” where it is shown that there is a little more in 
the first third than in either of the other thirds, but that the differ- 
ence is very small, varying from three tenths to one per cent. 
