Annual Report for 1894 of the Consulting Chemist. 765 
consequently, greater significance, and with this view it has been 
decided to carry out at the Society’s Experimental Farm at Woburn 
further feeding experiments, both with bullocks and with sheep, on 
the use of wheat and barley, with the view of throwing more 
light on this subject. 
There has been a diminution in the number of manures of 
different kinds submitted for analysis ; markedly so in the case of 
bone meals. Basic slag, however, continues (chiefly, I think, on ac- 
count of its cheapness) to be fairly extensively used, and its quality 
has been found throughout satisfactory. 
Nor has there been the large number (228) of tvuters that were 
submitted in 1893. This, however, is fully accounted for by the 
difference of the two seasons, the prolonged drought of 1893 calling 
for the utilisation of many a fresh source of supply, often of 
questionable character. Neverthelesss, the considerable number of 
169 samples has this year been forwarded. 
Perhaps the most important event to chronicle in connexion 
with the chemical work of the Society has been the coming into 
force of the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act of 1893. It was 
thought by some possible that the machinery set up by the new Act 
would practically take the place of the existing organisations of 
agricultural societies and similar bodies, and provide all over the 
country ready means for the farmer to ensure, at small cost to 
himself, the quality of whatever he purchased in the way of food 
stuffs for his cattle or of manure for his land, and that there 
would be no longer need for him to subscribe to such associations 
for the purpose of obtaining analyses and advice regarding his 
purchases ; while, so far as the trade was concerned, the insertion 
in the Act of certain penal clauses would make adulteration and 
misrepresentation impossible, and encourage the honest trader to the 
exclusion of the dishonest one. The first year’s experience, how- 
ever, has very far from shown any such result ; and, though 
undoubtedly, good has been done by the passing of the Act, the 
Quarterly Reports of the Chemical Committee of this Society have 
pointed only too clearly to there being as much need as ever for 
the continued vigilance and action of the Chemical Department 
in securing to the members the purity and good quality of what 
they purchase, and for the exercise, by the members, of the privileges 
of chemical analysis which are afforded to them. 
Perhaps the chief advantage to the consumer from the Act of 
1893 is that now, for the first time, there has been a definite pro- 
nouncement as to certain terms such as “ linseed cake,” “ cotton 
cake,” “ rape cake,” &c., being applicable only to cakes made from 
the seeds denoted by those terms, and being thus “ pure ” cakes. 
A second great gain has been in the obligation enforced on a vendor 
to give an invoice, and one that has to set out, in the case of a feed- 
ing stuff, whether it is a pure or a mixed one, and, in the case of a 
fertiliser, what its essential ingredients are. Further advantages 
exist in the obligation imposed on manufacturers to omit all 
deleterious, and to declare all worthless, ingredients in mixed 
VOL. V. T. S. — 20 3 E 
