BEP0RT TO THE COUNCIL ON ADULTERATION OE SEEDS. 



31 



"What comes up at all, comes true, and the character of the dealer 

 for supplying a true article is maintained. 



(4.) By manipulating and doctoring the seed so as to make bad 

 seed look like good, as by dying bad clover-seed, sulphur-smoking 

 bad grass-seed, oil- dressing bad turnip-seed, &c. &c. 



6. Tour Committee have been unable to ascertain to what ex- 

 tent these different practices are carried on ; but they have rea- 

 son to think it must be considerable. One of their informants 

 was able, from personal knowledge, to instance one individual 

 whose principal business consisted in destroying the vitality of 

 cheap seeds for the purpose of mixing with sound seed of greater 

 value ; and they have reason to believe that this is by no means a 

 solitary case. They are told also that large numbers of people 

 obtain a livelihood by the manufacture of bad into apparently 

 good clover-seed. 



7. Tour Committee next endeavoured to ascertain how far the 

 various causes, above-mentioned, actually affect the productive- 

 ness of seeds sold in the market. They have not at present made 

 any tests with the view of determining how far seeds sold as of 

 special quality or kind come true. Their experiments have, in the 

 first instance, been directed solely to the vitality of seeds ; and to 

 that alone the present Report applies. In a future Report they 

 may deal with the quality of the kinds of seeds sold, as well as some 

 other collateral points. 



8. In entering on the inquiry as to vitality, your Committee 

 attempted to obtain a test for guessing at the age of seed by 

 the percentage which comes up ; but this they found impossible, 

 so much depending on the original quality, and the care with 

 which the seed has been afterwards stored. They made, however, 

 some trials of turnip-seed with this intent ; and it may not be 

 without interest to mention that, in them, they found the percent- 

 age which came up from home-grown good seed one year old to 

 be 80, three years old 43, seven years old 32, and the older the 

 seed the lower the rate of germination. 



9. It would ha^e been beyond the means at the disposal of your 

 Committee to test even a small sample of the goods of all the seeds- 

 men and nurserymen in London ; but by going only to the whole- 

 sale dealers, from whom the retail dealers of course chiefly obtain 

 their supplies, they thought they could arrive at a fair estimate 

 of the general character of the seeds sold throughout the country. 

 It appears from Dr. Hogg's ' Horticultural Directory ' that there 

 .are twenty wholesale dealers in London. From each of these (with 



