But the growth of the sugar beet, and the extraction of beet-sugar, are superseding the chicory trade, and are gradually assuming the first place both in the rural and manufacturing industry of Magdeburg and its neighbourhood. The largest producer of beet-sugar in the world is France; but the German Customs’ Union is the second in this respect, and Magdeburg is the principal centre of the German production. Like eager horses, skilfully jockeyed, and running neck and neck, the _Cis_ and _Trans_ Rhenave sugar-extractors have for years back been struggling hard to get ahead of each other in the perfection of their methods, and the profit of their fields and manufactories; and many curious facts and difficulties have come out or been surmounted during this chemico-agricultural and chemico-manufacturing contest. For it is an interesting circumstance, that while chemistry was, on the one hand, aiding the farmer to grow large and profitable crops of roots, it was, at the same time, on the other, assisting the manufacturer more perfectly and profitably to extract the sugar from the roots when raised. But it is curious, at the same time, that in the advances thus made on either hand, the increased profits of the one party were found singularly to clash and interfere with the profits and processes of the other. Increase the size of your turnip by chemical applications, said agricultural chemistry, and you have a heavier crop to sell to the sugar-manufacturer. And the grower took the advice, and rejoiced in his augmenting profits. The practices of North British turnip-growers were introduced by British settlers, and their imitators, on the plains of Magdeburg; and root crops more like those which cover our British turnip-fields were seen, for the first time, on the banks of the Elbe. Then up rose economical chemistry, on the other hand, and said, No, no, Mr Farmer, we don’t want, and we won’t buy, your larger roots. We cannot afford to purchase your gigantic beets, the offspring of your high manuring. The chemistry which enlarged the roots did not increase the quantity of sugar in proportion. “A ton of good big beets gives me less sugar,” says the extractor, “than a ton of your small ones; and therefore, if you will grow the big ones, I must have them at a less price in proportion. And, besides, your high manuring puts salt into the turnip, which prevents me from fully extracting all the sugar they do contain.” Thus chemistry, on the one side, was at issue with chemistry on the other, and the progress of a profitable scientific agriculture appeared to be arrested by that of a scientific and economical extraction of the sugar.