GRAIN AND GRASS SEED. 159 



is barley-cake and cold water that gives the Gideon vim, so 

 friirhteniiiff to the imagination of the host of Midiau. 



I think it was an oversight in the Committee that there was 

 no premium awarded to the goodly specimens of grass-seed 

 on exhibition. Facts demonstrate that there are seeds in the 

 market that, from age or from some other causes, are worth- 

 less. I once liad two acres to seed. I found at one store 

 about seed enouorh for one acre. I took it and sowed it on 

 one-half of the field. At noon I procured at another store 

 enough to seed the other half. Both parcels were sowed the 

 same day, on the same kind of soil, equally well prepared. 

 Result, one-half well stocked ; the other — I had no evidence 

 that a seed sprouted. Now this worthless seed was what was 

 left of a lot that had been sold to the farmers. What a severe 

 loss to those ftirmers. Now, supposing I had gone direct to 

 the other store and procured the rest, and had mixed the two 

 parcels together, and then sowed. The result would have 

 been expressed in the very language of hundreds of farmers 

 every year : "I sowed a liberal quantity of seed, but somehow 

 my ground is not more than half seeded." Suppose, again, 

 that I had found enough to seed the two acres at the first store. 

 I should have expressed the result in the very language of 

 perhaps threescore farmers that had bought of that lot of seed : 

 " I never sowed a larger quantity of seed to the acre ; but the 

 dry weather came on, and I don't know that there is a seed 

 come ; I shall have to plough it again ; I am sorry ; I had 

 taken great pains to enrich and prepare the ground for grass ; 

 it frustrates all my plans for a hay-crop for another year." 

 In our opinion there never was, and never will be, a worthless 

 pound of seed lost till it comes into the hands of the farmer, 

 entailing its hundred-fold loss to him. Remedy ; every farmer 

 raise his own seed ; harvest and preserve with care. 



For the committee, 



D. Todd, Chairman. 



