Deterioration Sugar Beets Due to Nitrates 51 
vious crop was beets. The attack of leaf-spot on the beets in this 
field was not more than mediumly severe. The reaction of this soil 
is alkaline, and the water-soluble in samples taken to represent the 
first, second and third foot of soil ranges from 0.1 to 3.655. The 
potash in the surface foot ranges from 0.68 to 0.95, in the second 
foot from 0.82 to 1.07, in the third foot from 0.48 to 0.93; the phos¬ 
phoric acid ranges in the first foot from 0.11 to 0.82, in the second 
foot from 0.16 to 0.69, and in the third foot from 0.13 to 0.88. The 
humus nitrogen calculated on the soil was 0.073, 0.050 and 0.025 
in the different samples of the surface foot, 0.040, 0.039 an d 0.041 
in the second foot, 0.051, 0.053 an d 0.008 in the third foot. The 
lowest amount of lime in this soil was found in one of the samples 
from the third foot and was 4.18 percent. The magnesia amounts 
to about 1.5 percent, but in one sample representing the second 
foot it falls to 0.84 percent. The available potash exceeds 0.01 per¬ 
cent and the available phosphoric acid in the three surface samples 
taken one foot deep was 0.007, 0.003 an d 0.010 percent. We have 
abbreviated these analyses, giving the essential chemical factors sup¬ 
posed to influence the growth of plants. It is usually assumed that, 
while the beet plant is a heavy feeder, its roots are not strong for¬ 
agers, but unless we are led astray by our methods, there ought to 
be in this soil an ample supply of the chemical elements of plant food 
that they require, and I saw nothing in the crop to indicate the con¬ 
trary. 
This is the land on which the greater number of our fertilizer 
experiments were made and not being satisfied in regard to the re¬ 
sults obtained the check plots were subsequently resampled in sec¬ 
tions of one foot each to a depth of three feet. The samples were 
composite, each containing three sub-samples, and were submitted to 
the ordinary agricultural analysis with the following results : 
