178 The Colorado Experiment Station 
0.02702, and on 8 Nov. 0.01871 and 0.01421 in these cases the 
beets had, it is true, increased in size by 50 percent or more but the 
decrease is greater than would be required by the increase in size 
provided no changes had taken place in the nitric nitrogen in the 
beets. In the normally developed beets without nitre, the nitric 
nitrogen fell in this time from 0.01925 to 0.0082 and from 0.01670 
to 0.00746. It would seem that by removing the leaves we had 
practically stopped the transformation of the nitric nitrogen in the 
beet. The actual loss of nitric nitrogen over the apparent loss due 
to increase in size is only 11 percent of the nitric nitrogen present at 
the time of defoliation. It seems evident that the transformation 
of the nitrates took place in the leaves. The nitric nitrogen in the 
stems on 1 Sept., the earliest date on which we examined the blades 
and stems separately was almost exactly five times as much as in 
the blades, by 28 Sept, it had entirely disappeared from the blades 
but persisted in the stems till 12 Oct., the latest date on which we 
examined the leaves when we found in the stems of beets grown 
without addition of nitre 0.01956 and 0.01797 for the two varieties 
E R and Z R. 
Defoliation produced big changes in the beets but the character 
of these changes does not appear to be the same as those produced 
by an excess of nitrates, nor do these beets have the characteristic 
qualities of the beets grown on bad ground nor of the low quality 
beets grown on good ground, see Analysis XX, in which we have 
high percentages of pure ash, nitric nitrogen, total nitrogen, both 
in the beets and in the press juice, the injurious ash and nitrogen 
per 100 sugar are high, especially the injurious nitrogen, on the 
other hand, the phosphoric acid is decidedly low, whereas in the de¬ 
foliated beets it is quite high, i. e., for Colorado beets. The only 
point that they really seem to have in common is a low percentage of 
dry substance. These results greatly strengthen the conclusions at 
which we arrived in 1910 relative to the problematical influence of 
the leaf-spot upon the quality of the beets in the Arkansas Valley. 
There is no question but that the destruction of the leaves even as 
late as 1 Sept, is prejudicial to the beets in several ways, but the 
composition of the beets is quite different from that of the poor beets 
produced in the Valley even on good ground, which, on the other 
hand, do have the composition aqrl qualities of beets grown with an 
excessive supply of nitrates. The leaf-spot disease is serious 
enough and affects the crop prejudicially, if it is equivalent only to 
defoliation, but it cannot be held accountable for the general deteri¬ 
oration of the beets complained of throughout the Arkansas Valley. 
A comparison of our beets with German beets shows them to 
be of larger size and to contain less sugar, less dry substance, more 
ash constituents, less total nitrogen, less proteid nitrogen, always 
