AGRICULTURAL SEEDS, SELECTION AND TESTING 



265 



wet blotter pads on a dinner plate (Fig. 118) under a bell jar, the following 

 times may be taken as the ones in which more than one-half the seeds used 

 i may be expected to sprout: The cereals, clovers, opium poppy, cruci- 

 fers, spurry, vetchlings and peas three days. 



Cucurbits, beans, flax, spinach, buckwheat, rye, wheat and timothy 

 grass four days. 



Iv 



cot 



FIG. 117. PIG. 118. 



FIG. 117. Seed and stages in germination of white bear (Phaseolus vulgaris). A. 

 Seed with hilum; B, seed deprived of its coats. C, early stage of germination; ,D, later 

 stage show epigeal cotyledons; epicotyl, hypocotyl and first foliage leaves; r = radicle; 

 h = hypocotyl; e = epicotyl; cot = cotyledon; Iv = first true leaves; p = plumule. 



FIG. 118. Homemade seed tester. A, closed: B, open. (After Brown, Edgar and 

 Hillman, F. H.: Seed of Red Clover and its Impurities. Farmers' Bulletin 260, 1906, p. 8.) 



Oats, tall oat grass, canary grass, maize, meadow fescue and ray grasses 

 five days. 



Red top, sainfoin, beet, carrot (Fig. 119) and others six days. 



Meadow foxtail, yellow oat grass, sweet vernal grass, peas, orchard 

 grass seven days. 



The volume-weight is obtained by weighing in the air the contents 

 of a standard measure, such as, the bushel, or the hectolitre. This 

 weight is more or less influenced by the shape and size of the seeds which 

 permit them to form a more or less compact mass, and also by the 



