REVIEWS 379 



ing them with this excellent translation, and we trust its reception will be such as 

 to repay him for having undertaken the laborious task which he has performed 



so ably. 



F. Cavers. 



Impurities of Agricultural Seed. By S. T. Parkinson, B.Sc. [Pp. 105, with 

 152 illustrations.] (London: Headley Brothers. Price3j.net.) 



Although the importance of using clean and high-grade seed is generally 

 recognised by agriculturists, very little is done in this country to help the farmer 

 to avoid the troubles certain to arise from sowing inferior grades of seed which 

 he may unsuspectingly have purchased. Most of the well-known firms now give 

 a guarantee of purity with their seeds ; but many very inferior grades, often 

 of foreign origin, are on the market to-day. The temptation to make a bargain 

 cannot be resisted, and the farmer learns, too late, that such impure samples are 

 dear at any price. 



The authors of this useful little book endeavour to show those who are prac- 

 tically interested in this question how they may examine their seeds themselves, 

 and how to identify the weed seeds occurring in the samples offered to them. As 

 there is no official seed-testing station in this country, many British seedsmen 

 send their samples abroad, especially to the Control Station at Zurich, which has 

 a world-wide reputation for seed-testing. It is time that this unsatisfactory state 

 of affairs was ended by the establishment of a National Seed-Testing Station for 

 Great Britain. All the important European countries, the United States, and 

 many of our Colonies already possess such stations. 



Many weeds, because of their poisonous properties, or because of the difficulty 

 of eradicating them when once established, or for other reasons, are classed as 

 "noxious." So countries have resorted to special legislation designed to protect 

 the farmer from the damage due to these noxious weeds and to improve the grade of 

 seed generally. Thus, Canada schedules twenty-six species of plants as " noxious," 

 and samples containing more than one of these weed seeds in every pound of the 

 pure cereal, or more than one weed seed in every 1,500 of smaller type seeds, 

 must be labelled to that effect. For seeds of the Red Clover and Lucerne type 

 four standard grades are recognised according to the proportion of noxious or 

 other weeds they contain. The authors are of the opinion that such legislation 

 is not always an unmixed blessing; but some of the countries concerned pronounce 

 themselves satisfied with the working of their Seed Control Acts. 



The greater part of the book is devoted to a very complete descriptive list 

 of the commonly occurring weed seeds. The descriptions are very clearly 

 expressed in simple, non-technical language, while the accompanying illustrations 

 from photographs of 150 weed seeds are remarkably well reproduced. The plates 

 are very conveniently arranged with regard to the text. By means of the " key" 

 provided, it is comparatively easy for any one possessing no special knowledge 

 of the subject to identify the various species. A practical test has shown that the 

 observer is most likely to go wrong in the early stages of classification, where 

 he has to decide on the nature of the surface before assigning the seed to its 

 particular group. Possibly line drawings rather than the half-tone blocks used 

 for the plates would have been better in some cases. 



A guide of this kind was obviously wanted, and the authors may be congratu- 

 lated on producing a book that more than fulfils the modest claims put forward 

 in the preface. 



