: 5 2 The Colorado Experiment Station 
taken, one of them from about the beets, actually beneath the leaves, 
was between 15 and 17 tons pen acre. 
The experiments made with sodic nitrate in 1910 and 1911 to 
show its effects upon the quality of beets and upon the character of 
the thick juice produced in the factory, tog-ether with the properties 
of samples of beets grown upon apparently good land, and also such 
as were grown upon evidently bad land show by the character and 
uniformity of the results that it is more than reasonable to attribute 
the falling oft in the quality of the beets in the Arkansas Valley to 
the formation of excessive amounts of nitrates in the soil during 
the season and not to climatic conditions or to the effects of the leaf- 
spot. These are most certainly factors which have a decided in¬ 
fluence upon the crop, specifically upon the bad qualities of the beets. 
They cause the very general production of beets with low percent¬ 
ages of sugar and phosphoric acid, with a high percentage of total 
nitrogen, especially of nitric nitrogen, and a low ratio of albumin 
nitrogen to the total nitrogen in the juice, with a high percentage of 
ash. This results in the production of abnormally high percentages 
of molasses, 7.5 to even 10 percent from beets which have not been 
frozen and subsequently deteriorated. 
The general applicability of this statement is shown by the 
nitric nitrogen in the fifteen samples of Colorado molasses as com¬ 
pared with the six from other sources, especially with the four from 
Bohemia. The maximum ratio that we find in the latter for the 
nitric to total nitrogen is 0.37, while the minimum found for this 
latio in any Colorado molasses examined is 10.66 and the maximum 
is 28.88. We need not go farther in the discussion of these results, 
the big fact that many of our Colorado molasses are very rich in 
nitrates is evident. In this connection, however, I may mention a 
fact observed by Dr. Potvliet in studying the thick juices prepared 
in our experimental work, i. e., that the nitrates in the dry sub¬ 
stance of the thick juice was lower than it should have been to cor¬ 
respond wdth the nitrates found in the dried cossettes. This loss 
was very considerable, amounting to 5° percent in the case of the 
last beets discussed. In view of this actual loss of nitrates observed 
and the possibility of its taking place in the factory on a large scale 
as well as in the battery samples, the very large amount of nitric 
nitrogen found in our molasses becomes even more suggestive than 
it already is of the large amount in the beets worked. 
The deterioration in the quality of the crop in the Arkansas 
\ alley during the past eight years has not, of course, been accepted 
\\ ith indifference and no effort made to check it, on the contrarv, the 
situation has been recognized as serious by the managers of the 
plants.who have been responsible for the success of the companies 
operating in the valley. T he cause of the trouble was not reco^r- 
