220 AGRICULTURE 



he desires. In some cases it is not difficult 

 to determine whether a sample or consign- 

 ment of seed is true to name, but in other 

 cases one must rely upon the character 

 of the vendor for careful business methods 

 and upright dealing, or one has to wait until 

 the resulting plants have grown sufficiently 

 to disclose their identity. It is, of course, 

 a simple matter to distinguish the seed of 

 barley from that of oats, or the seed of rye- 

 grass from that of Timothy ; but it is not 

 so easy to distinguish rape seed from swede 

 seed ; while it is practically impossible to 

 detect any difference between the seed of 

 varieties of swedes, or between Broad Red 

 Clover and Cow Grass. Mistakes on the 

 part of sellers have occasionally led to 

 expensive arbitration or litigation, as, for 

 instance, where two-cut sainfoin has been 

 supplied for the single-cut variety, or where 

 rape seed has been inadvertently supplied 

 to a purchaser of swede seed. 



Purity is concerned not only with the 

 question of differentiation between closely 

 related varieties, but also with freedom from 

 the seeds of indifferent or positively injurious 

 plants. Apart from the case where a sample 

 contains the spores of a destructive fungus 

 like Smut, one may meet, in a seed sample, 



