AGRICULTURAL EXPERIilENT STATIONS. £77 



will| become a matter of satisfactory certainty, and the econ- 

 omy of cattle food will be pushed to near its limits. 



A third direction in which the Experiment Station is 

 proving of direct service to the farmer is in the examination 

 of seeds as regards their genuineness, purity, and germina- 

 tive quality. 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 

 stringent laws and severe penalties were enacted to protect 

 the farmer. 



There lately flourished in London, establishments where 

 the business of " doctoring " turnip-seed was prosecuted on 

 an extensive scale. Old and worthless seeds, or the seeds of 

 inferior kinds of turnips, 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 lujyuJina) 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 farmers in the Saxon city of Chemnitz alone, of which two- 

 thirds was yellow clover. 



In Saxony light and inferior kinds of oats are extensively 

 bought b}^ seedsmen to adulterate the heavy and prized sorts. 



•The celebrated "Probstei rye" is annually produced to the 

 extent of 2,800 to 3,400 bushels ; but the amount ostensibly 

 disposed of in the seed trade is hundreds of thousands of 

 bushels. 



Dr. Xobbe, Director of the Tharand Experiment Station, 

 reports finding in a sample of tall meadow fescue grass 

 {Festuca elatior) 70 per cent, of adulteration ; and two 

 samples of so-called "grass seed," having all the external 

 appearance of a good article, were found to consist of grass 

 flowers only, without a ripe seed of any sort. 



