789 
QUARTERLY REPORT OF THE CHEMICAL 
COMMITTEE. 
December 1893. 
In presenting their usual Quarterly Report to the Council, the 
Chemical Committee are glad to be able to record that under the 
provisions of an Act of Parliament passed during the present year 
their labours for the repression of the adulteration of manures and 
feeding stuffs will in the future be materially lightened. In the absence 
of any legislative provisions as to the purity of fertilisers or feeding 
stuffs, it has been necessary for the Committee to publish from time 
to time, for the protection of Members of the Society, the names of 
manufacturers and vendors who have supplied impure and adul- 
terated articles, or who have given to their customers inaccurate 
descriptions of goods sold. The action of the Society in this regard 
has undoubtedly been of high value to Members and to the farming 
community at large, as warning them against unscrupulous traders 
and against articles sold under misleading names. 
II. For the future the buyer will have the remedy against fraud 
largely in his own hands, for the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Bill, 
of 1893, introduced into the House of Commons by the President of 
the Board of Agriculture, and passed into law on September 22, 
1893, as the 56 & 57 Yict. ch, 56, requires the vendor to give the 
purchaser an invoice stating the nature of the article sold, such 
invoice to have the effect of a warranty that the article is of the 
quality stated. A copy of the Act is printed as an Appendix to 
this Report for the information of Members ; but it may be con- 
venient to state here its general purport, as set out in a circular 
issued by the Board of Agriculture, from which the following extracts 
are taken : — 
Warranty to be implied on the Sale of a Fertiliser or Feeding Stuff. 
Every person who sells for use as a fertiliser of the soil any article which 
has been manufactured or subjected to any artificial process in the United 
Kingdom, or imported from abroad, is required to give to the purchaser an 
invoice stating the name of the article and whether it is an artificially com- 
pounded article or not, and what is at least the percentage of the nitrogen, 
phosphates soluble and insoluble ( i.e . in water), and potash, if any, contained 
in the article, and this invoice is to have effect as a warranty by the seller 
of the statements contained therein [section 1 (1)]. This provision does not 
apply to a sale where the whole amount sold at the same time weighs less 
than half a hundredweight [section 1 (3)]. 
Every person who sells for use as food for cattle any article which has 
been artificially prepared is required to give to the purchaser an invoice, 
stating the name of the article, and whether it has been prepared from one 
substance or seed, or from more than one substance or seed, and this invoice 
