147 
Deterioration Sugar Beets Due to Nitrates 
the beets cut, or in other words, would increase the molasses pro¬ 
duced in a factory working such beets alone to probably 8.5 percent 
or possibly more on the weight of the beets cut. 
Analyses VII, VIII and CLXXXV represent the best beets that 
I have been able to obtain, with these might be grouped Analysis 
XI. No. VII was grown in Michigan, VIII near Fort Collins, XI 
in the extreme eastern part of the Arkansas Valley in Colorado, 
while CTXXXV was grown in Montana. These are all good beets 
but the samples from Colorado and Michigan are excelled by the 
Montana beet and for this reason I will consider the Montana beet 
alone in this place and only from the standpoint of quality without 
any attempt to account for it. The trimmed beets from Michigan 
averaged 1.8, those from Fort Collins 1.5 and the Montana beets 1.06 
pounds. The weight of the Arkansas Valley beets was not noted 
but they were only a little smaller than the Fort Collins beets and 
can be safely estimated at about 1.25 pounds. The Montana beets 
show the following qualities : high sugar content, 18.24 percent, low 
ash, pure ash in beet, 0.4909 percent, high phosphoric acid 0.08117 
percent in beet, high potash, low soda, low total nitrogen, high ratio 
for proteid nitrogen both in the beet and juice, nitric nitrogen en¬ 
tirely wanting, injurious ash per 100 sugar very low, 1.6724, in¬ 
jurious nitrogen very low, 0.16722 per 100 sugar. The amount of 
phosphoric acid in the pure ash is fully normal, a feature which is 
very markedly wanting in our Colorado beets. The ash of sample 
VIII, given in Analysis X, approached it more nearly than any other 
sample that I can recall and it has 12.515 percent phosphoric acid 
in pure ash and 0.0762 percent in beets. I do not know what the 
composition of the Arkansas Valley beets was during the years pre- 
vious to 1904 but our records show that the sugar content was not 
far from 17.5 percent—this figure is more than sustained by the 
average sugar content of the beets received at the factory at Rocky 
Ford during its first three or four campaigns. The beets given in 
Analysis XI are not the richest beets harvested from this field, sev¬ 
eral wagon loads sampled above 16 percent and this same territory 
in 1911 averaged between 17 and 18 percent sugar. The growth of 
the beets in 1911 was of an entirely different type from that of pre¬ 
vious years. These facts are stated to remove the impression that 
there is no justification for taking a beet of such high quality as the 
Montana beet as a standard. The College land is probably as good 
as any on which beets were grown in 1910 or 1911 from which we 
gathered samples. The College samples 13 Oct. 1910 contained 
13.3 percent sugar, were five percent lower in dry substance, and 23 
percent richer in pure ash in beet than the Montana beets. The 
phosphoric acid was fairly high, 0.07342, the sodic oxid was high, 
0.12858, the total nitrogen was 0.18636 and the nitric nitrogen 
