Deterioration Sugar Beets Due to Nitrates 41 
green manure ; sixth, beets grown on College Farm at Fort Collins. 
There are in addition to these, three series grown at Fort Col¬ 
lins in 1911. 
The questions involved are unfortunately more complicated 
than even agricultural questions ordinarily are. We have, for in¬ 
stance, in the fourth class of beets, all of the questions which we 
have heretofore discussed. We have dry land and wet land with a 
comparatively low water plane, the presence of alkalis and, as the 
average man would judge, their absence. The presence of excessive 
quantities of nitrates in portions of the field and wholly different 
conditions in other portions. While leaf-spot was abundantly pres¬ 
ent, it was much worse in some portions of the field than in others. 
The soil itself is not entirely uniform as it varies from a fine 
sandy loam to a more or less gravelly clay loam. These conditions 
undoubtedly produced their several effects and so modified one an¬ 
other, that it is impossible to analyze the results and correctly attrib¬ 
ute a specific result in a given measure to each individual condition. 
We can only determine the extent to which for instance the applica¬ 
tion of 1,000 pounds superphosphate, 150 pounds of phosphoric acid 
per acre, affected the quality of this crop by means of check samples 
taken from the corresponding sections of adjoining rows. 
It seems superfluous to state these facts, but on the other hand 
it is advisable in order that the reader may at least have our state¬ 
ment to show that we appreciate the difficulties of our problem, in 
some measure at least, and that we have duly considered the course 
that we have pursued in our work. 
We have been compelled to take many samples, for the sake of 
confirming our observations and establishing their general validity 
under a variety of conditions. The difficulties presenting them¬ 
selves in establishing what the composition of beets grown on un¬ 
fertilized land is, are very great. The soils collected from beet 
fields in the Arkansas Valley at the end of the season and even those 
taken in January, 1910, to a depth of six inches, show by their 
varying quantities of nitric nitrogen how nearly impossible it is to 
judge of the amount of nitrates that may have been furnished to the 
beets during their growing period. Andrlik’s experiment showed 
that the. application of 528 pounds of Chile-saltpetre to the acre 
applied in three equal applications produced decidedly deleterious 
effects. The injurious nitrogenous substances amounted to 6.16 
parts per 100 of sugar and the injurious ash to 1.89 parts per 100 of 
sugar in beets which had received this amount of saltpetre, against 
2.36 parts injurious nitrogenous compounds, and 1.45 parts of in¬ 
jurious ash per 100 of sugar in beets grown without the addition of 
the nitrate. Apropos to these results Andrlik remarks that Chile- 
saltpetre ^applied in light and particularly in heavy applications acts 
