Adulter ation of Seeds. 
21 
orange, looking more like fragments of pale gray clay tlian an 
organised body. A " No. 17 " sieve will allow it to pass through, 
and will detain both lucerne and (-lover seed. The species ot 
dodder are numerous, but the most important to farmers are — 
1. Cuscutn rpiliiium {the flax dodder), Avith slender pale-green 
stems, wliitish (lowers in small distant clusters, and fleshy calyx 
lobes nearly as long as tlie corolla. Parasitical on flax. 
2. Cuscuta trifolii (the clove?- dodder), with reddish-yellow 
slender branching stems, small white flowers tinged with pink, 
and a narrow calyx as long as the tube of the corolla. A most 
formidable enemy to clover-fields. 
These were both, perhaps, introduced into this country with 
foreign seed. Clover dodder excited great alarm in England 
when it first appeared, some years since, and it still continues its 
ravages where great attention is not paid to its destruction and 
prevention. It is supposed first to have come from Affghanistan 
with lucerne seed or trefoil, and it rapidly spread over this 
country, for when such a plant once has hold of the land it is, 
as has been shown, extremely difficult to extirpate or keep in 
check. 
The accompanying illustrations, kindly supplied by my friend 
Professor Buckman, of Cirencester, will enable the plant to be 
identified wherever it occurs. 
Mr. Buckman, in his Prize Essay on Agricultural Weeds in the 
16th volume of the Journal, very properly deprecates a practice 
which no honest man would follow — of seeding clover too much 
affepted by dodder to be useful for feed. It is true the dodder 
by weakening the plants renders them more apt to form seed, so 
that a considerable yield is produced, but it can never be right 
for an individual to perpetuate a vile weed for the sake of a 
trifling profit to himself. 
Rye-grass. 
Bright dry and well-kept samples of rye-grass will retain their 
vegetative power for a number of years. What the buyer has 
chiefly to guard against is heated and badly-conditioned seed. 
This defect is evident to the sense of sight and smell, but not so 
the admixture of spurious seeds, such as one or two varieties 
of the brome-grass (commonly called lop-grass) and the black 
grass, " Alopecurus agrestis," or slender fox-tail grass, some of 
the worst weeds the farmer has to contend with. These ripen 
with and are harvested in crops of seed rye-grass by careless 
growers. The seeds being very similar in size to the rye-grass, 
are very difficult to separate from it ; and unless samples are very 
cai'efully examined, the existence of the admixture will very pro- 
bably escape the notice of the purchaser until he takes a view of 
