FEEDING STUFF INSPECTION. 201 



STATE LEGISLATION AGAINST WEED SEEDS IN FEEDS. 



The great tendency to introduce into these waste products 

 foul seeds is a serious one. For the most part there is little 

 known as to the nutritive qualities of these weed seeds; occa- 

 sionally, notably the case with corn cockle, they are poisonous. 

 They are a great menace to clean fields. Naturally the use of 

 these feeds high in foreign weed seeds will tend to the introduc- 

 tion of undue numbers of undesirable plants and sometimes of 

 plants unknown to the state. In some of the feeding stuffs in 

 the method of preparation, they are heated to a high enough 

 temperature so as to kill the seeds. 



As wheat milling offals will always carry more or less foreign 

 weed seeds, a law making it a misdemeanor to sell feeding stuffs 

 that carry weed seeds would be somewhat impracticable. There 

 might, however, be placed a limit to the amount and kinds of 

 foul seeds that would be allowed. It might be practicable to 

 enforce a law that was made specific against any particular 

 weed, as for instance corn cockle. The weed question in feed- 

 ing stuffs is a very important one. It would seem unwise to 

 attempt to regulate the amount of weed seeds that are present 

 in grass seeds and allow an unrestricted sale of feeding stuffs 

 carrying in some cases more dangerous seeds than grass seeds 

 carry. 



Unfortunately, however, the trouble is not confined to wheat 

 offals and the various, feeds coming under the requirements of 

 the law. Whole grains, particularly oats, frequently carry large 

 amounts of weed seeds. A sample from a car of oats shipped 

 into Bangor the present year consisted of 80.7 per cent of oats, 

 4 per cent of inert matter and 15.3 per cent of foreign seeds. 

 Over 9 per cent of these seeds were harmless, such as wheat, 

 timothy, barley, Kentucky blue grass, redtop and white clover, 

 but about 6 per cent were made up of lady's thumb, mustard, 

 goosefoot, winged buckwheat, yellow foxtail, wild buckwheat, 

 pale persicaria, green foxtail, meadow fescue, Menzie's pepper 

 grass, hedge mustard, five finger flax, ragweed, American wild 

 mint, horse nettle, evening primrose, witch grass, night-flowering 

 catchfly, penny cress, yellow wood sorrel and field pepper grass. 

 While this is probably an extreme case and would not be so 

 likely to occur in years when oats were low in price, yet it is 



