HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 187 
The Cuarrman. You provide that it shall all be tagged? 
Mr. Trimsie. No; that the adulterated seed shall be tagged. 
Mr. Covitie. I[t is similar to the pure-seed law in your State? 
The CHarrMan. Suppose you stop in a retail store and buy 50 bush- 
els of Kentucky blue-grass seed and found it was not Kentucky blue- 
grass seed, and no tag on it? 
Mr. Trrmsie. That could be traced up to the wholesale dealer, and 
I think you could have the seed dealer bring him up and have him 
indicted. 
, Mr, Wrieut. Would not that come under the fraud laws of the 
tate % 
Mr. Trimpie. You would have to have a State law to comply with 
the Government law. 
Take 35 per cent of the Kentucky blue-grass seed and orchard-grass 
‘seed, and it is adulterated. 
The Cuairman. Half of the clover seed is adulterated. 
Mr. Trims. This bill covers clover seed. I have been in confer- 
ence with blue-grass and orchard-grass seed dealers in Kentucky since 
J have been down and it is very acceptable to them—the honest dealers. 
Mr. Covitte. I want to call your attention to some work we are 
doing on the cultivation of medicinal plants. We import from 
$12,000,000 to $15,000,000 worth of medicinal and drug plants, and 
we are working to demonstrate the possibility of cultivating drug 
lants in the United States. I have here some samples of those that 
ave been grown in experimental plants here at the Department and 
in Vermont. 
The Cuarrman. What are those plants? 
Mr. Covitue. These three here [indicating] are belladonna. I sould 
like to show them all around and show you the superiority of the 
American-grown article. ‘The drug men are delighted at the prospect 
of growing these in the United States. 
flere is also digitalis [exhibiting] in addition to belladonna. I will 
say very briefly there is a very excellent promise of our being able to 
grow these things profitably. 
The Cuatrman. Where is belladonna grown? 
Mr. Covitiz. Chiefly in Germany and England. 
The Cuarrman. And digitalis? 
Mr. Covittr. Both grown in the same countries. 
The Cuarrman. Is it a profitable crop? 
Mr. Covitte. I do not know if it would be a profitable crop under 
our conditions, but believe it will be. We can not, at the present 
time, recommend it strongly as a eet until we have gone further 
ahead with our experimentation. We have to make an analyses of the 
amount and character of the alkaloid it contains, and the whole proc- 
ess is rather a slow and expensive one. I will not devote any further 
time to the question of medicinal plants further than to say that we 
wish to increase our planta little in the matter of medicinal plants and 
to carry experiments on in the South in addition to those experi- 
ments we are carrying on in the North. There are certain plants it is 
impossible to grow in the Vermont station that it is possible to grow 
in the Gulf station. ; : 
One of the troubles we have at the Department of Agriculture is 
to give advice to people who are questioning whether or not we shall 
go into certain doubtful enterprises. One of the things that has 
