Deterioration Sugar Beets Due to Nitrates 105 
0.10230 percent. I know nothing about the composition of the 
Michigan soil. This sample was obtained and submitted to exam¬ 
ination because I was informed by men who had handled the juices 
in Michigan factories and also in factories in the Arkansas Valley 
that the Michigan juices worked much more easily than the juices 
from fresh beets, not frozen, thawed,, rotten or otherwise deter¬ 
iorated beets, in the Arkansas Valley. 
The beneficial effects of sodic nitrate apparent in the third and 
fourth samples of this table are not in harmony with the results ob¬ 
tained in our other experiments with this fertilizer. Other observ¬ 
ers, however, have found that Chile-saltpetre applied in quantities 
up to 340 pounds per acre may affect the quality of the beets bene¬ 
ficially, especially in regard to the sugar content, provided that the 
soil is not itself already super-saturated with nitrogen, a phrase used 
in the Jahresbericht der Zuckerfabrikation, 1910, p. 7, but the per¬ 
centage of nitrogen in the soil experimented with and thus desig¬ 
nated is not given. The soils on which our experiments were made 
would certainly not be considered, according to ordinary standards, 
as supersaturated, carrying a total of not more than 0.11, practically 
the amount considered as an adequate percentage, while the humus 
nitrogen amounts to 0.072 percent of the soil, showing that in this 
case almost two-thirds of the total nitrogen was soluble in ammonia. 
Another investigator, Kiehl, found as the result of his observations 
on 29 localities an increase in the sugar content of from 1.2 to 1.99 
percent., due to the use of sodic nitrate. The conditions under 
which these experiments were made were not given in the abstract at 
my disposal. On the other hand, all the data given relative to the 
total nitrogen in beets grown with the addition of sodic nitrate show 
that it is increased, which in general is true, but in the case of the 
third sample, with 250 pounds of sodic nitrate, this cannot justly be 
asserted. The most that one can do is to hold the point as ques¬ 
tionable, for the result actually indicates that there has been a de¬ 
crease. The fourth, fifth, and sixth samples cannot be considered 
as checks, for the samples were not grown on the same land. This 
is the case in which our check plots failed us completely. The same 
may be said regarding the injurious nitrogen and ash. So that if 
we consider the third sample only, it appears that the application of 
250 pounds of sodic nitrate per acre was in all respects beneficial. 
These favorable conclusions cannot be drawn in the case of the 
fourth sample, for while we have no usable check samples with which 
to compart it, the effects of the 5 00 pounds or the second 250 pounds 
depressed the yield by 1.3 tons per acre and the sugar by 0.7 percent. 
On the other hand it increased the total nitrogen from 0.14 to 0.20 
percent, the nitric nitrogen practically seven-fold, the injurious nitro¬ 
gen per 100 sugar 90.0 percent, and the injurious ash per 100 sugar, 
