296 Annual Report for 1908 of the Consulting Chemist. 
resorted to in the majority of cases of special difficulty or 
importance. 
The Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act of 1906 has now 
had a two years’ working experience, and it may be allowable, 
therefore, to review it in the light of what it has been able to 
effect. To tell the truth, it must be acknowledged that it has 
proved, as I ventured to predict it would, even more of a 
“ dead letter ” than its predecessor of 1893. It must be 
acknowledged, at the same time, that in some minor respects 
it has been an improvement on the old Act, but, as a matter of 
fact, the practical utility of the Act has been thwarted almost 
entirely by : (1) the retention — at the instigation of manu- 
facturers and the trade — of the clause limiting the operation of 
the Act to samples taken with due observance of all formalities 
and within 10 days of delivery (three days of these being 
required by way of giving notice of intention to sample) ; 
(2) the taking away from County Councils of the right of 
instituting proceedings on their own initiative ; and (3) it 
must be added, the unwillingness shown by the Board of 
Agriculture to institute proceedings even when flagrant cases 
have been brought to their notice. 
Accordingly it has come about that I doubt whether there 
is a single instance in which action has been set on foot by a 
private individual, still less by the ordinary farmer, and, where 
anything has been attempted, it has been solely by the agency 
of official samplers who have been specially instructed by their 
County Councils to look out for suspicious cases. More often 
than not the outcome of such exceptional activity has met 
with but little encouragement from the Board of Agriculture, 
who, in 90 per cent, of the cases submitted to them, have 
contented themselves with giving a “ warning ” to the trader 
at fault. The Board’s Annual Report for 1907 on the working 
of the Act gives the particulars of some 20 cases submitted to 
the Board, but in only two of these was a prosecution instituted. 
One of the cases was dismissed on a technical objection, and 
the other failed. 
In the course of the present year a case was submitted to 
the Board of Agriculture by the R.A.S.E. in which, under the 
name of the natural salt “ Kainit,” was sold an artificially 
prepared salt, obtained from seaweed, the potash salt of which 
consisted largely of carbonate of potash, and not of sulphate of 
potash as in the case of “ Kainit,” and which, if mixed with 
sulphate of ammonia, would drive o£E the ammonia and entail 
heavy loss to the farmer. Yet the Board of Agriculture was 
unwilling to prosecute even in this case. Such a disposition 
on the part of the Board is most discouraging to a Society like 
the R.A.S.E., which has done so much to secure and maintain 
