GUAKANTEES IN THE TRADE IN SEED 89 



or which they had grown for them by seed growers from stock 

 seed supplied by the firms. But naturally some firms lacked 

 the means or the ability to accommodate themselves to the 

 new conditions. Much seed was still sold of which neither the 

 seller nor the buyer knew the origin, and many farmers were 

 still willing to buy seed if only it was cheap without realising 

 the loss arising from the smaller yield of food-stuff resulting, 

 which in most cases was many times greater than the saving 

 effected by buying cheap seed. 



But it also happened that merchants sold seed under 

 incorrect names or false trade descriptions, or sold seed stating 

 it to be of a certain strain which it was not, and in some of these 

 cases claims for compensation were raised which were decided 

 by the Courts. In a series of annual reports on the " Harvest of 

 Boot Seed and the Trade in Boot Seed," written by Helweg and 

 published in Tidsskrift /or Planteavl, as also in his previously- 

 quoted paper read before the Boyal Agricultural Society of 

 Denmark in 1916 and published in the Tidsskrift of the same 

 year, Helweg has given much information about these law cases 

 and about complaints from farmers of bad seed. These reports 

 have served as a useful guide to both buyers and sellers, and 

 have materially helped to evolve the perfect system of guarantee 

 now commonly practised. 



A Danish Law of 27th April, 1894, makes it a punishable 

 offence to use a false trade description in connection with goods 

 sold or for sale, and a Law of 20th March, 1918, superseding 

 the former, deals with unfair competition and false trade descrip- 

 tions. Under the former Law several cases were decided in 

 which seed merchants had to pay farmers compensation for 

 selling seed which was not as represented. One merchant had 

 to pay a compensation of 350 for inferior seed of turnips, while 

 another who had sold seed of swedes but delivered rape-seed, 

 which was only discovered when the plants grew up, had to 

 pay the farmer 13 10s. per acre. From 1904 many seed mer- 

 chants had undertaken to refund the money paid if seed 

 delivered was not as stated. But, as Helweg pointed out 

 (Report, 1911), the loss suffered by the farmer was many times 

 larger than the amount of the invoice. The Society of Whole- 

 sale Dealers in Boot Seed, formed in 1904, at the instigation 



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