16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



(white weed) will yield 15,000 seeds. One pound of char- 

 lock, 4,000. A single plant of stinking chamomile, 46,000. 

 Dock, 17,000; while an half acre of beggar's lice will grow 

 seed enough to spoil the wool of 1,000 sheep. Charlock of 

 very enduring vitality has been known to produce 8,000 seeds 

 from a single plant. An English farmer whose instincts led 

 him rather to poesy than the plow, after fruitless attempts to 

 eradicate it, was thus inspired to sing : 



'* The kerlock plant is a zite to zee, 



As it zliines in the vilds like gold. 



But he zays, zays 'e. ' It aint no use 



Vor to go to a girt expense, 



Vor 'twill come agen, whatever thee does. 



Nor a year or two vrom hence." 



In a field chosen for the great trial of mowing machines in 

 New York, the prevailing herbage was red-top, blue grass 

 and fowl meadow. On close inspection, it was found that 

 the field contained 55 forage plants, 10 grasses, and 45 weeds. 

 The essence of this wandering out of grass into weeds, is to 

 show the no inconsiderable injury from unwittingly sowing 

 the seeds of useless and noxious weeds, and some of the 

 cheating arts of dealers. It is no secret, howevermuch it 

 may be practiced on the "sly," that grass, as well as garden 

 seeds, are purposely adulterated. There are large establish- 

 ments expressly for adulterating and counterfeiting seed. 

 One of the divers ways 



To give the fields a foul seeding. 

 And years of toil of weeding, 



is to employ women and children to collect seeds of weeds 

 and wild grasses, which are put into bags and labeled " pure 

 timoth}^ clover, red-top, brown bent," &c. An examination 

 of these samples, showed that forty-one per cent, were worth- 

 less grasses and poisonous weeds, and eighteen per cent, 

 incapable of germination. From another establishment, three 

 tons of so-called red clover seed were sent to market, two- 

 thirds of which was sorrel seed. In a ton of meadow fescue, 

 were fourteen hundred pounds of foul seed. In a sample 



