Sugar Beets. 
33 
season. Thirteen of these ashes represented varieties of sugar beets, 
mostly the Kleinwanzlebener variety. The reason that my work 
was confined to this one variety was that the results obtained 
showed so little variation that the information to be obtained did 
not promise to be commensurate with the labor involved. Our 
conclusion from that series of analyses was, that probably owing to 
the richness of the soil in the elements of plant food necessary for 
the beet, the alkali present had exerted but little or no influence on 
the composition of the ash. The ash in that series which showed 
the largest amount of soda was one prepared from beets grown on a 
Farm plot free from alkali, or as much so as any of our soils. The 
only thing which we observed in the analyses which might be taken 
as indicating anything characteristic of the soil, was the tendency 
shown toward a high chlorin percentage. We have not endeavored 
to study this subject in such detail in the subsequent years, but 
have reduced the number of samples, enlarging them at the same 
time, so as to make them thoroughly representative. As we had 
selected the Kleinwanzlebener variety in 1897, we selected it also 
in 1898. The samples were not only of the same variety, but were 
grown on the same ground, so the ashes ought to give us a measure 
of the influence of the manure applied, and the effect of the culti¬ 
vation if the composition of the ash is materially affected by these 
factors. Our conclusion in 1897 in regard to this point, was that 
the composition of beet ashes was relatively constant, within com¬ 
paratively narrow limits. The following analyses corroborate this 
view, though they are not given for this purpose: 
