GUARANTEES IN THE TRADE IN SEED 81 



many samples of seed to be sold, while farmers and their 

 associations send in samples of seed delivered in order to learn 

 whether the seed complies with the guarantee as to purity, 

 germination, and so on, under which they were bought. The 

 increase is also due to the fact that many seed dealers now 

 sell their seed to farmers or to societies of farmers, subject to 

 a scheme worked by the State Seed Testing Station, according 

 to which analyses of samples, sent under certain conditions as 

 to sampling after delivery, are made and published by the 

 Seed Testing Station. Twenty-one firms and associations 

 dealing in seed and selling an aggregate quantity of seed corre- 

 sponding to two-thirds of all the seed used in Denmark, have 

 now submitted themselves to this control. " It is safe to say," 

 writes the director of the Seed Testing Station, K. Dorph- 

 Petersen, " that there is no other country in the world where 

 the control of the seed used by the farmers is so extensive and 

 so careful. The results are not accomplished under the pressure 

 of the law, but by the mere voluntary co-operation of those 

 interested." l 



This so-called " automatic control " aims at investigating 

 whether goods delivered by the dealers, subjecting themselves 

 to this control, correspond to the guarantee given to the buyer 

 as to purity, maximum proportion of weed seed, germination, 

 and so on, or whether the goods are so much below the 

 guaranteed quality that the purchasers may be entitled to 

 compensation or reduction in price, according to the rules of the 

 Seed Testing Station. The control is carried out by the Seed 

 Testing Station which, by an agreement with the seed merchants 

 in question, assumes a control of all seed delivered, during the 

 season, under the guarantee given by the merchants to farmers, 

 their societies, to retailers or to co-operative stores. The 

 merchants must inform the Seed Testing Station of the 

 guarantees under which they have sold their seeds during tho 

 season, and must at the time of delivery submit to the Station 

 the addresses of all home purchasers of these seeds, stating the 

 amount and variety of seed and the guarantee under which 



1 Pamphlet published on the occasion of a visit by a British Seed Com 

 mission, and a visit by Australian farmers, to the Seed Testing Station in 

 July, 1919. 



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