April 1908.] 



359 



Miscellaneous. 



Again, some seedsmeu object to a 

 Seed Station on the ground that the 

 Station might give to their rivals, perhaps 

 by unfair use of the Staton's report, 

 a reputation which has takeu them 

 years to secure. The seedsmen in Ger- 

 many were at first strongly opposed to 

 the establishment of Stations. Now, how- 

 ever, they see the advantage of a 

 properly conducted one, and in such 

 an important centre as Hamburg they 

 use it freely in their dealings with 

 one another, and with their suppliers 

 and customers. 



One seedsman admitted before the 

 Committee that the result of testing by 

 a Continental expert and by his own 

 expert uniformly came very near one 

 another. He knew, he said, when he 

 was buying worthless seed, and supposed 

 the farmers in the West of Ireland went 

 on buying the ''blowings" of grass 

 seeds because it paid them to sow them. 



(6) Pedigree. — It is impossible by 

 mere observation or by an ordinary 

 germinating test to determine the 

 pedigree of a seed. As the degree of 

 fixation of the characteristics of an 

 agricultural variety is often of an 

 indeterminate character, the pedigree 

 question is surrounded with natural 

 difficulty, and often complicated by 

 trade interests. 



Confidence between buyer and seller, 

 without which no trade could exist, 

 must be largely the determining factor 

 in accepting the statements as to the 

 pedigree of a seed, especially where 

 field experiments are not carried out. 

 The originator of an agricultural or a 

 trade variety would not be so foolish 

 as to supply seed not in keeping with 

 his description, and direct dealing with 

 him should be guarantee enough, pend- 

 ing the field result. 



Advocates of seed-testing have never 

 contended that the pedigree of a seed 

 can be tested in the incubator. One 

 well-known firm brought before the 

 Committee samples, in some cases inten- 

 tionally mixed, of known seeds with 

 very different pedigrees but so similar in 

 appearance that no one, the firm assert- 

 ed, could distinguish them from one 

 another. Apart from the fact that there 

 is a microscopical means of distinguish- 

 ing rape, swede, cabbage from one 

 another, it appears to have been over- 

 looked that the common law could deal 

 adequately with the cases. If a seedsman 

 who submitted oats, germinating 78 per 

 cent, and gathered in a rather wet 

 autumn, to sulphur burning to preserve 

 them was, to my knowledge, fined about 



£150, it is easy, if the law is reliable, to 

 foretell the fate of a seedsman supply- 

 ing, e.g-, mangel mixed with 25 percent, 

 wild beet, one of the samples submitted. 

 A Seed Station has not, as its main 

 function, the detection or prevention of 

 fraud. 



(c) Time-Limit. — Some firms state that 

 quite half their business has to do with 

 seed they never handle at all. Such 

 speculative trade has its risks to run, 

 aud the speculating firm which no dovibt 

 receive a guarantee when buying the 

 (foreign) supplies should be prepared to 

 have the seeds it deals in submitted by 

 the British farmer to test. 



It has been argued by some that 

 general seed-testing would paralyse the 

 seed trade if customers waited for the 

 results of the testing before sowing. 

 Such delay is quite unnecessary. The 

 same machinery for taking samples 

 under the Fertilisers and Feed Stuffs 

 Act could be utilised in preventing the 

 postponement of the sowing of seeds. It 

 is only the samples taken from the bulk 

 that are required for action under 

 the Act, 



It is true that seeds do not ripen 

 equally well each year. Machinery exists 

 for the removal of the unripe seeds, and 

 there are seedsmen who guarantee year 

 by year the same percentage of germin- 

 ation. The buyer should at any rate 

 have the opportunity of knowing the 

 germination percentage of the seed he 

 is buying. There could be a mutual 

 agreement as to a unit of repayment or 

 of compensation in cases where the test 

 showed the seeds to be under or above 

 the guaranteed standard. Such a mu- 

 tual arrangement has been found work- 

 able. The common law could still deal 

 with cases where there was evidence of 

 deliberate fraud. It has come to my 

 knowledge that in England, where 

 certain landlords agee to pay half the 

 cost of the seeds supplied to their ten- 

 ants, these in some cases arrange for 

 low-priced inferior seed to be actually 

 supplied to them, while the landlord pays 

 for superior seeds and so the whole bill. 

 The tenant does not seem to realise that 

 he more than pays for the difference 

 later on, in poorer crops. 



To meet the time difficulty attempts 

 to ascertain the vitality or viability of 

 a seed at once have been made by the 

 use of chemical reagents. Further, Dr. 

 Waller has shown in a very interesting 

 manner that seeds which are alive give 

 an eletrical discharge which he calls a 

 " blaze " current, when a current from 

 an induction coil is sent through the 



