471 
was, in the year 1866, a considerable excitement about poor fertilizers. 
Thereupon a much more vigilant control was exercised; the result was 
a great improvement in the general character of the articles sold in the 
province during the year 1867. In Peruvian guano, for instance, there 
was an increase in the content of nitrogen of one per cent., or twenty 
pounds to the ton. Itis calculated by the director of the experiment- 
station at Halle, tbat in this single item alone there was a saving to the 
farmers of the province of $20,000 gold, and taking into account the 
increase in the other valuable constituents, phosphoric acid, potash, 
&c., as well as nitrogen, not only in guanos, but also in superphosphates, 
bone-dust, and other concentrated fertilizers, the saving must have 
amounted to many times this sum.” 
Low-grade and spurious fertilizers are detected if put upon the 
market in sections where control-systems are in vogue, or, to speak 
more accurately, are kept out of the market. Competition between 
different dealers comes to be based upon goodness of quality, and thus 
the standard is raised, and the wares become actually cheaper. Farmers 
buy fertilizers with confidence, and, in the light of the knowledge which 
comes to them from the experiments at the stations, coupled with their 
own experience, use them economically and profitably. And thus the 
agriculture, and with it the other industries and conditions of well- 
being in the districts where science is thus applied, are improved, and 
the whole community benefited. 
INVESTIGATIONS OF SEEDS—THE SEED-CONTROL SYSTEM. 
Of the many new ways in which science has, during the past few 
years, been applied to agriculture, one of the most interesting and 
useful is in the examination of seeds. 1In1869, Dr. Nobbe, director at the 
station at Tharand, in Saxony, commenced the study of the seeds in 
common use in German agriculture, and founded the first ‘‘ seed-control 
station.” How much good has come from this may be inferred from the 
fact that during the seven years that have since intervened, over 4,000 
samples of seeds have been examined at Tharand; that an astonish- 
ing amount of adulteration has been discovered, so much so as to exert 
a by no means inconsiderable effect upon the agriculture of the country ; 
and that the importance of the work has come to be recognized so fully 
as to induce the establishment of a number of seed-control stations in 
Germany and other European countries. Various kinds of adultera- 
tions have been discovered. Sometimes these consist merely in seeds 
of weeds and other extraneous plants, either of inferior value or posi- 
tively harmful, which have been gathered with the genuine seeds; 
sometimes they consist of inferior seeds purposely added to increase the 
bulk and weight of the wares sold. In some cases the seeds used for 
adulteration are deprived of vitality by previous steaming, roasting, or 
boiling; in others, so base are the practices to which the love of unlaw- 
ful gain will stoop, not even this means is used to prevent the injury 
which must be brought upon the consumer by raising useless or nox- 
ious plants, instead of the useful ones he seeks. Genuine seeds which 
have lost their vitality by age are often mixed with fresh seeds. The 
most barefaced, though not the most harmful, seed-swindling dis- 
‘covered by Professor Nobbe, consists in grinding quartz rock, sifting 
out particles of the proper size, dyeing them in proper colors, and mix- 
ing them with clover-seeds. Samples of clover-seed containing 25 per 
cent. by weight of this admixture of colored grains of quartz can be 
