EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS. 279 



pondence with a number of dealers the .sales were quickly checked and 

 probably very little has actually been sold. 



This experience reveals a weak point in the fertilizer law, in that it 

 allows the administrative officer no discretion in the issuance of licenses. 

 Any manufacturer or dealer wishing to sell a material as a fertilizer, 

 by filing the required copy of the analysis and certificate together with 

 a sample of the article, is entitled to receive a license upon payment of 

 the fee. Furthermore, no authoritj' is given for revoking a license when 

 it is proved that the material being sold is purely a fraud. Under the 

 present condition publicity through the press and personal correspond- 

 ence is our only recourse, since if we wait for the publication of the bul- 

 letin the information reaches the farmer too late. 



In order to meet such conditions, the law should be revised, if possible, 

 at the next session of the legislature. 



Insecticide inspection.: A bulletin giving results of the inspection of 

 insecticide and fungicide samples collected during the spring of 1915 

 was published during the year. A collection of samples has been made 

 during the past few weeks and the analytical Avork will be started at 

 once. Some infractions of the law have been found but in most instances 

 it has been wholly through ignorance of its provisions. 



Feeding Stuffs Inspection: At the last session of the legislature the 

 Administration of the Feeding Stuffs law was transferred from the 

 Dairy and Food Commissioner to the State Board of Agriculture and 

 this office was placed in control of the work. The law effecting the 

 change became operative the latter part of August, 1915, but as no funds 

 were transferred nothing could be done until a sufficient amount had 

 been accumulated from the issuance of licenses. The collection of sam- 

 ples was begun the first of January, and by temporarily employing extra 

 inspectors the whole State was covered in about four months and nearly 

 1200 samples were collected. The analytical work is now about com- 

 pleted and it is hoped to have the bulletin ready for publication before 

 the fall collection begins. - 



By a cooperative arrangement with the U. S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture the writer was appointed a commissioned State official, under the 

 Federal pure food and drugs act, with authority to collect samples of 

 feed from interstate shipments and refer the same to the Federal in- 

 spection laboratory at Chicago. This authority was also vested in our 

 inspectors and 31 samples of low grade cottonseed meal were referred to 

 the Federal authorities for action against the original shippers. 



Objection was raised by the State millers in regard to our ruling re- 

 quiring a license on Wheat Bran with ground screenings not exceeding 

 mill run and Wheat Middlings with ground screenings not exceeding 

 mill run. The law states plainly that wheat bran and middlings when un- 

 mixed with other materials are exempt. The millers claim that it is im- 

 possible to clean the wheat of all foreign material and that the bran 

 and middlings will always contain some screenings. We contend, how- 

 ever, that the amount of screenings left in the wheat as it goes to the 

 rolls, under modern milling processes, is necessarily very small, and con- 

 sequently the amount of screenings occurring in the bran or middlings 

 should never be more than one or two per cent. Such an amount would 

 be negligible. 



