484 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



on it by additions to our knowledge of benefit to agriculture, 

 horticulture, and other branches of economic botany. 



It was in the year 1869 that seed-testing, as now understood, 

 started. Nobbe of Tharand was asked to examine a grass- 

 mixture, and found the sample was not true to description, a 

 remark which applied to many other samples he then obtained 

 from various parts of Germany. 



Although the credit of starting the first Seed-testing Station 

 must be given to Nobbe, measures had been taken as long ago 

 as 1 816 in Switzerland to suppress fraud in the seed trade. Thus 

 an inspector had the right of entry into a seed shop or ware- 

 house for inspection of the seeds on sale, punishment following 

 detection of fraud. In England in 1869 the Adulteration of 

 Seeds Act was passed, making it penal to kill or dye seeds. The 

 Royal Horticultural Society of England did much to expose the 

 corruption which had crept into the seed trade. In its second 

 report {Farmers Magazine, February, 1869), the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society Committee says : "... Everything is thus 

 thrown upon the honesty of the dealer. He fixes the prices, 

 regulates the quality, and the purchaser is kept in the dark, and 

 has no check upon either. This is a temptation beyond what 

 the average frailty of human nature ought in fairness to be 

 exposed. . . One of the chief functions of the association [of 

 wholesale seedsmen] is . . . the regulation of prices . . . and the 

 determination as to what kinds of seeds should have their average 

 lowered and to what extent it should be done." With honour- 

 able exceptions trade catalogues offered in addition to "nett" or 

 pure seed "trio" seed, i.e. seed killed for admixture purposes! 

 The Act of 1869 made the admixture of killed seed an offence, 

 but did not provide machinery for the detection of the offence, 

 as is now the case for artificial manures and feeding stuffs under 

 the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act of 1893. 



In 1900 the English Board of Agriculture appointed a Com- 

 mittee to inquire into the conditions under which agricultural 

 seeds are at present sold and to report whether any further 

 measures can with advantage be taken to secure the maintenance 

 of adequate standards of purity and germinating power. This 

 Departmental Committee recommended the establishment of one 

 central Seed-testing Station under Government auspices, with 

 the fees so fixed as to encourage seedsmen to sell subject to 

 re-testing by the purchaser, should he desire it. So far this 



