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White and Alsike Clover Seed. [april, 



trinsic value as well as the commercial worth of a sample by its 

 appearance alone. If the seeds in bulk are uniformly of a fair 

 even size, fresh and of a bright yellow colour, with only an 

 occasional brownish seed, it may fairly be assumed that the seeds 

 are new and at least of average germination ; on the other hand, 

 seeds which fail to respond to the germinating test have, in all 

 probability, suffered by the weather conditions during the latter 

 period of ripening and harvest, or are old or immature owing to 

 one or other of the two first-named conditions. The colour of 

 some of the seed may have changed from a yellow to a dark 

 red or brown ; the greenish-yellow tinge in others is direct 

 evidence of the lack of perfect development. The fraudulent 

 sophistication of white clover seed, either by rubbing with sulphur 

 or by the application of the fumes of sulphur dioxide, in an 

 attempt to restore the original or normal light tint lost by age 

 or weathering, is now entirely a thing of the past, at least so far 

 as the experience gained in handling many thousands of 

 samples enables the writer to judge. In the hands of the expert 

 all farm seeds are roughly divided into two classes, root seeds 

 and cereals forming one, clover and grass seeds forming another. 

 In the first division it is absolutely necessary to know the pedi- 

 gree and character of the stock before any estimate of the true 

 value of the purity and germinating test can be arrived at. It 

 is quite possible for a sample of root seeds to germinate lOO 

 per cent., but if the stock from which it is produced is of poor 

 quality, it may be of much less value than the seed of a good 

 stock germinating 50 per cent. In the second class, viz., clover 

 and grass seeds, the purity and germination alone, with a know- 

 ledge of the country of origin, are sufficient to determine its v^ilue. 



A good sample of white clover should at the very least have 

 a purity of 96 per cent., and the standard of top-price quality 

 should be 98 or 99 per cent. 



The progressive up-to-date farmer, who tests the purity and 

 germination of the clovers and grasses he sows, should never, 

 under any circumstances, be satisfied by the germination test 

 alone, for to the uninitiated it is entirely misleading. To take 

 a case in point : the germination has been tested perhaps at a 

 seed laboratory in this country, or at one of the seed stations on 

 the Continent, and reported at 95 per cent. Though this re- 



