Sugar Beets. 
25 
the ground water. The increase was more pronounced and of 
longer duration after the manure was applied. The effects of the 
straw upon the soil lead the writer to attribute the effects of the 
manure principally to the organic matter in it, improving the 
mechanical condition of the soil and bettering its biological condi¬ 
tions, as indicated by the increased amount of nitric acid formed. 
Experiments made in 1897, 1898 and 1899 upon the effect of 
soaking beets in water at a temperature of about 42 degrees 
Fahrenheit for a period of seven days, resulted uniformly in show¬ 
ing an increase in the amount of sugar present, and also in the 
coefficient of purity. 
The reducing power of beet pulp was determined by extracting 
the beets with 80 per cent, alcohol until the extract no longer re¬ 
acted for sugar, then boiling with dilute hydrochloric acid and 
determining the reducing sugar thus formed and calculating it as 
pentose. The pentoses, or, as it is expressed in the bulletin, the 
reducing power, did not decrease as the beet matured. The rich 
beets showed higher percentages of pentoses than those showing 
lower percentages of sugar. The quantity of pentoses in stock beets 
is quite as great as that in sugar beets. 
Soaking seemed to diminish the quantity of pentoses present. 
The sugars present in the leaves of sugar beets in largest 
quantities are glucose and maltose. Cane sugar is present in small 
quantities only, or is entirely absent. 
