250 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
ward for two or three steps, it is then suddenly 
drawn backwards, and again thrust forward with ! 
Fig. 1.— rue’s potato-digger. 
a sort of jerking or punching motion; this method 
of working is very easy compared with a steady 
pushing motion, which makes the machine work 
somewhat harder, hut in our hands not too hard at 
all. This little machine will be found very useful 
in field work, where a larger cultivator may not be 
needed, or indeed to use in place of a larger one. 
Hay Harvesting Machinery. 
The labor of harvesting grain and hay has been 
more facilitated by machinery than any other farm 
work. But few young farmers can remember the 
slow and tiresome sickle, or the laborious cradle, 
with which grain was formerly reaped, or the scyth* 
and rake with which hay was slowly gathered. 
The splendid harvesting machinery now in use in 
Fig. 1.— THE ANTI-FRICTION HAT-CARRIER. 
the field, is a lasting honor to American inventors 
and mechanics, who have originated and construct" 
ed so great a variety of it, and a remarkable help to 
the farmers whose labors are so greatly eased 
by it. But while the labor in 
the field has been simplified, 
tbe means for securing hay in the 
barn have been to a great extent 
neglected. The majority of farm¬ 
ers who have reapers, mowers, and rakes, still 
neglect the horsefork by which the time and labor 
of unloading are lessened more than three-fourths. 
This smaller service of unloading is of equal im¬ 
portance with the greater one of harvesting, for a 
whole crop may be endangered through delay in 
getting it under cover. A very excellent hay car¬ 
rier is shown in the accompanying engraving, (fig. 
1. ) This is the Anti-friction Hay Carrier, made by 
the U. S. Wind-engine and Pump Co., of Batavia, 
Ill. It is made to run upon a wooden track which 
is fastened to each pair of rafters, as seen in figure 
2. The carrier is 
shown in the illustra¬ 
tion just as it appears 
when the load has 
been drawn up to it, 
and the catch by 
which it is held in its 
proper position over 
the load is released. 
The draft upon the 
rope now carries the load on the fork to the 
place where it is required to be tripped. The car¬ 
rier and fork can be used to stack hay in the field 
as well as to put it away in the mow. A hay or 
straw fork, the Noyes Grapple Fork, which we re¬ 
gret we have not space to illustrate, and which may 
be used to raise hay, straw, chaff, clover seed, 
manure, or any other small stuff is also made by 
the same manufacturers, and is a very effective 
and desirable implement to use with this carrier. 
Science Applied to Farming.—XXXI. 
Investigations of Seeds. 
Of the many new ways in which science has of 
late come to be applied to agriculture, one of the 
most interesting as well as most useful is in the in¬ 
vestigation of seeds. In 1869, Dr. Nobbe, director 
of the Agricultural Station at Tharand, in Saxony, 
commenced the study of seeds in common use in 
Germany, and founded the first “ Seed-control Sta¬ 
tion.” During the seven years following over 4,000 
samples of seeds have been examined at Tharand ; 
adulterations have been discovered, most ingenious 
in character, harmful in effect, and remarkable in 
amount, working a by no means inconsiderable in¬ 
jury to the agriculture of the country; and more 
than twenty Seed-control Stations have been estab¬ 
lished in Germany, while others have been either 
founded or projected in Denmark, Austria, Hunga¬ 
ry, Holland, Belgium, and Italy. 
One of the outgrowths of Prof. Nobbe’s work at 
Tharand, is his lately completed HancVmch der Sa- 
menkunde , a volume of 642 pages, of which 390 
pages are devoted to the physiology of seeds, 140 
pages to the methods of determining their agricul¬ 
tural value, and the rest to the means of preventing 
frauds, purifying seeds, and other cognate topics. 
This work shows that a really new science, most in¬ 
teresting in itself and useful in its application, is be¬ 
ing developed by Dr. Nobbe’s researches. Aside 
from the valuable contributions thus made to our 
knowledge of the constitution and characters of 
seeds, and the nature and conditions of the germina- 
tive process, Dr. Nobbe has shown how different 
seeds may be readily distinguished from each other, 
how adulterations maybe detected, and their extent 
estimated, and has devised a simple and ingenious 
apparatus by the use of which it is easy to determine 
what percentage of agiven sampleof seed is alive,and 
capable of sprouting and producing vigorous plants. 
The urgent need of such work as this is shown 
by the revelations made of the condition of the 
seed market in Europe, some striking pictures of 
which are given by Nobbe and others in the Euro¬ 
pean agricultural journals. 
Fig. 2. —SECTION OF TRACK. 
tluLY, 
In a late number of the Landmrthschaftlichen 
Jahrbucher, Dr. Nobbe gives a report of examina¬ 
tions of a large number of samples of grass seeds, 
from which it appears that a great deal of that sold 
in Germany is not only extremely impure, but also 
miserably poor in germinating power. This is ac¬ 
counted for by the fact that much of this seed is 
not raised for sowing, but gathered along the high¬ 
ways, on the borders of the fields, and especially in 
the woods, by women and children who work very, 
cheaply, and that the English, Austrian, and Ger¬ 
man markets are largely supplied with grass seed 
from these sources. A large number of analyses of 
samples of such articles, as they were offered in Eu¬ 
ropean markets, gave an average of 41 per cent of 
foreign matters, including a great many foreign 
seeds, among which were those of worthless grass¬ 
es, poisonous plants, and parasites. Of the 59 per 
cent of seed which corresponded to the labels un¬ 
der which the articles were sold, only 18.3 per cent 
were capable of germination. A sample of Or¬ 
chard grass, Dactylis glomerata, contained 39 other 
species of seeds. In a sample sold for Meadow 
foxtail, Alopecurus pratemis, only one-half the seeds 
were of this species, and of the genuine seeds only 
5 per cent were alive and capable of germinating, 
so that 100 lbs. of the seed as sold, furnished 50 
lbs. of inferior, worthless, or injurious foreign 
seeds, and only 21 lbs. of seeds capable of produc¬ 
ing plants of the species for which they were sold. 
All the samples referred to came from dealers who 
ranked among the most reliable in Germany. 
In 1868, over three tons of so-called red clover 
seed were sold to farmers in the Saxon city of 
Chemnitz alone, of which two-thirds was yellow 
clover, and this practice prevailed generally in Eng¬ 
land and on the Continent. In 1874, after the sub¬ 
ject of bad seeds had been extensively agitated for 
some years, a society was formed in Saxony for the 
purchase of seeds, and dealers were invited to fur¬ 
nish samples with prices. The samples were tested 
at.the Station at Tharand. Of 51 specimens of red 
clover seed, 31 were found to contain seeds of the 
dodder, Cuscuta trifolii, the destructive enemy of the 
clover plant. The numbers of the dodder seeds in 
the samples varied from about 12 to 5,000 in each 
pound of clover seed. 
A few years ago there were a number of estab¬ 
lishments in London, whose sole business consisted 
in “ doctoring” inferior and foreign seeds, for mix¬ 
ing with pure seeds. This was done by boiling, 
roasting, macerating, coloring, or otherwise treat¬ 
ing seeds of weeds, or old seeds of the species to 
be sold, in such ways as to prevent their detection 
when used for adulteration. In 1869 it was esti¬ 
mated that 20,000 bushels of inferior turnip seed 
were thus prepared for mixing with the seeds of the 
varieties of turnips most used by English farmers. 
One of the most original, if not the most diaboli¬ 
cal of the methods invented for adulterating seeds 
consists in grinding quartz-rock, sifting out parti¬ 
cles of the proper sizes, and coloring them to imi¬ 
tate clover seed. This sort of manufacture was 
carried on for some time at or near Prague, in Bo¬ 
hemia, and a lively business in the sale of the pro¬ 
ducts seems to have been done in Hamburg. A 
letter from a party there to an English firm was dis¬ 
covered, offering a lot of over 16 tons, at specified 
prices for “colored’’and “not colored,”—about 
$2.50 per cwt. for the former, and $3.50 per cwt. for 
the latter—and stating that the writer was “doing 
a large business ” in that line with English seeds¬ 
men. We have some specimens of this artificial 
clover seed at our laboratory. So far as external 
appearance goes, they are very good imitations of 
the genuine seeds. We have two specimens of red 
clover seed, one pure, the other containing 25 per 
cent of these quartz grains. With the unaided eye 
it is difficult to distinguish between them. A good 
many persons have examined them closely, and it 
is very rare that any one has detected the sand by 
the eye alone. 
But impurities and adulterations are not the only 
defects of the seeds that farmers buy. The pure 
seeds are very apt to have lost their germinating 
power, or to be, practically, dead. Here the varia¬ 
tions in quality are as wide as in the botanical 
Characters. In the work above referred to, Dr. 
