Chemical Report, 
133 
I have already reported on the admixture of castor-oil beans, 
and the still more poisonous curcas bean, both of which I found 
last season in several samples of linseed-cake, and may add that 
not unfrequently almost any kind of rubbish, such as mill-dust, 
siftings of seeds, spoiled cakes, ground rice-husks, &c., when 
ready at hand, is deemed good enough by unscrupulous oil-cake 
makers for the production of feeding-cakes. The audacity of 
some makers in palming off adulterated linseed-cake as pure 
would hardly be credited, if it were not a fact that more than 
one linseed-cake sent to me for analysis, and bearing the press 
stamp "pure," proved to be mixed or adulterated with a variety 
of feeding materials, such as cotton-cake, earthnut-cake, bran, 
and rice-dust. 
The mention of rice-dust reminds me of a case brought under 
my notice a short time ago, in which the refuse-meal did serious 
mischief to a number of pigs to which it was given. The 
analysis of the meal in question showed that it was con- 
taminated with about 4 per cent, of nitre : a salt which, taken 
in large doses internally, has a powerful medicinal effect upon 
animals. In all probability the contamination of the meal with 
saltpetre was caused by damage in a heavy sea, as if a cargo of 
saltpetre and rice sustains damage by sea-water, the latter most 
likely would become impregnated with a solution of nitre, and 
the damaged rice, on being dried and ground into meal, will 
contain this non-volatile salt. 
On the occasion of a tour on the Continent last summer, I 
attended the annual Congress of Agricultural Chemists of Ger- 
many, which met this year at the Royal Agricultural College of 
Hohenheim in Wiirtemberg, and was much struck by meeting with 
nearly fifty scientific men, who, in different parts of Germany, 
are all engaged specially in chemico-agricultural pursuits. Many 
of them preside over laboratories, to which some experimental 
fields, feeding-stalls, and glass-houses, are attached, and in which 
every facility is provided for carrying on scientific agricultural 
inquiries. These establishments are called on the Continent 
Versuchs-Stationen (Experimental Stations). The results of the 
labours of the German agricultural chemists are published in a 
Quarterly Journal, containing much useful theoretical informa- 
tion, which deserves to be more generally known in England 
than it is. 
In 1868 I contributed to the 'Journal of the Royal Agricul- 
tural Society of England' the following papers: — 1. On the 
Solubility of Phosphatic Materials, with special reference to 
the Practical Efficacy of the various forms in which Bones are 
used in Agriculture. 2. On the Composition and Nutritive 
Value of Trifolium striatum, a new kind of Clover. 3. On the 
