INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1876. clxxxv 



pies of seeds have been examined at Tharand ; that adulterations 

 have been discovered, most ingenious in character, harmful in effect, 

 and remarkable in amount, so much so as to work a by no means in- 

 considerable injury to the agriculture of the country ; and that some 

 twenty seed-control stations have been established in Germany, w^hile 

 others have been either founded or projected in Denmark, Austria, 

 Hungary, Holland, Belgium, and Italy. 



One of the outgrowths of Professor Nobbe's work at Tharand is 

 his lately completed " Handbuch der Samenkunde," a volume of 642 

 pages, of which 390 pages are devoted to the physiology of seeds, 

 140 pages to the methods of determining their agricultural value, 

 and the rest to the means of preventing frauds and other cognate 

 topics. Some of the material of this work had been previously pub- 

 lished in the LandicirthschaftlicJien Versuchs-Statmien^ and other Ger- 

 man journals of agricultural science, and had indicated, what the 

 completed work decidedly shows, that a really new science, most 

 interesting in itself and useful in its applications, is being devel- 

 oped by Dr. Nobbe's researches. Aside from the valuable contribu- 

 tions thus made to our knowledge of the constitution and characters 

 of seeds, and the nature and conditions of the germinative process, 

 Dr. Nobbe has shown how different seeds may be readily distin- 

 guished from each other, how adulterations may be detected and 

 their extent estimated, and has devised a simple and ingenious ap- 

 paratus by the use of which may be determined what percentage of 

 a given sample of seed is alive, and capable of germinating and pro- 

 ducing vigorous plants. JS'obbe, Handbuch der Samenlcunde^ Berlin, 

 1876. 



Adulterations of Seeds. Some facts in this connection are cited by 

 Professor S. W. Johnson, as follows : " It is but a very few years since 

 attention was directed in Great Britain to the wholesale distribution 

 of purposely adulterated seeds throughout that country, and strin- 

 gent laws and severe penalties w^ere there enacted to protect the 

 farmer. 



"There lately flourished in London establishments where the busi- 

 ness of ' doctoring ' turnip seed was prosecuted on an extensive scale. 

 Old and worthless seeds, or the seeds of inferior kinds of tumijDs, 

 were killed and colored, and used to the estimated amount of 20,000 

 bushels annually for adulterating the seed of those varieties most 

 sought for by farmers. In London and on the Continent hundreds 

 of tons of the cheap yellow clover seed {Medicago liqmlina) were and 

 still are mixed in larger or smaller proportions with the red clover 

 seed, and sold at the high price of the latter. 



"In 1868 three tons of so-called red clover seed were sold to farm- 

 ers in the Saxon city of Chemnitz alone, of Mdiich two thirds was 

 yellow clover. In Saxony light and inferior kinds of oats are exten- 

 sively bought by seedsmen to adulterate the heavy and prized sorts. 



