94 FORAGE CROPS IN DENMARK 



of the crops in these control fields, whether the seed was what 

 it professed to be. 1 In the autumn several complaints came 

 from the farmers who had purchased seed, but few of these were 

 substantiated. By far the greater number were found to be 

 unjustified. If roots in the farmers' fields gave a low yield, 

 were forked or ran into seed but at the same time the sample 

 grown in the control fields showed none of these faults, it was 

 thereby proved that the cause was faulty cultivation or attacks 

 of pests or fungi and not faulty seed. This is, of course, of the 

 greatest importance to the retailer selling seed bought from a 

 wholesale firm under its seal. If complaints are raised and if 

 they are proved to be due not to the cultivation but to faulty 

 seed, then the wholesale firm must pay the retailer full com- 

 pensation as paid by him to the farmers. If, on the other hand, 

 the complaints are unjustified, which can be proved either by 

 having a sample of the consignment grown in a control field 

 or by comparing with the crops of other farmers resulting from 

 seed of the same stock from the same firm, there will be no 

 compensation to pay. But the wholesale firms also are interested 

 because they are protected against an abuse of which there had 

 been some instances both before and in 1913. A retailer might 

 buy seed from a wholesale firm and might advertise that he 

 sells that firm's seed. But he might also buy cheaper and 

 inferior seed elsewhere and pass it off as seed of that firm, which 

 might injure the reputation of the firm. Most large, respectable 

 wholesale houses, therefore, adopted the guarantee of genuine- 

 ness for all such seed of the origin of which they were sure, 

 such as was produced by or for them from their own stock 

 seed. But firms who bought cheap seed from anybody could 

 not follow this new reform, could not guarantee the strain, 

 and soon came to be regarded as unreliable. 



It might here be mentioned that by a decision in a High 

 Court, supported by an official declaration by the Merchants' 

 Guild of Copenhagen, stock seed is a legally recognised term, 

 and the selling of trade seed as if it were stock seed is a punish- 

 able offence. If, therefore, a dealer sells seed with a guarantee 

 of genuineness relying on the fact that the seed has been 



1 L. Helweg, " Reforms in the Trade in Root Seed," in Ugeskrift far 

 Landmcend, 1914, p. 514. 



