THE CHEMICAL WORK OF 1898 AND 1899. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE CONDITIONS. 
§11. The plot on which the beets were grown in 1898 w T as 
the same as that used in 1897. The character of this plot having 
been fully described in Bulletin 46, p. 5, it will not be 
repeated in this place. The cultivation of the preceding season and 
the effects of the soil remaining thrown up in ridges over winter, 
exposing it to the weathering action of the season, tended to better 
its mechanical condition. This was, as I stated in Bulletin 46, 
the result most desired in order to reduce our study to the question 
of the effect of the alkali upon the crop. In addition to the 
weathering, effected as above stated, I endeavored to further modify 
the mechanical condition by the application of manure and straw. 
The plot was divided into sections one hundred feet long and 
twenty-five feet wide; alternate sections received an application of 
manure at the rate of sixty-four tons to the acre, and one section of 
the plot, the most difficult one to handle, received a dressing of cut 
straw at the rate of fourteen tons to the acre. 
My object was twofold: First, to study the effect of the 
manure upon the soil; second, to observe its effect upon the crop. 
The straw was used that we might be able to judge, in a 
measure at least, of the relative effect of the manure as a mechanical 
agent and as a fertilizer. The crop raised was, as in 1897, sugar 
beets, and we were successful in getting the same varieties, but the 
seeds w T ere from different lots, for the crop of 1898. 
The cultivation was similar to that received by the preceding 
crop, but having gotten rid of a patch of poverty weed on the south 
side of the plot, we were not troubled by insects to nearly the same 
extent as during 1897, still both of the beetles, Systena taeniata and 
Monoxia pundicollis, observed then, appeared again and did some 
damage. We, however, did not have recourse to the use of 
insecticides as in the preceding year. In our case we found that 
removing the poverty weed and keeping our crop well tilled 
sufficed to keep the beetles down to such an extent that the 
damage done by them was not serious. 
The alkali appeared nearly as bad as heretofore, and we had 
trouble with the same sections that had previously given us trouble. 
