CHAPTER VII.
ON THE ART AND MYSTERY OF TURNIP-SEED ADULTERATION.
It has already been shown that turnip-seed is largely adulterated; it remains now to point out the nature of the admixtures, which may be summed up under the following heads:—
1st. Old seeds are mixed with new.
2nd. Charlock, “Indian rape,” and other seeds of the Brassicaceæ, are mixed with genuine seed.
1st.—The crops of seeds vary so much in their produce per acre, in one year, as compared with another, that in most years there is a superabundance of some kinds and a scarcity of others.
Now, as most seeds are of comparatively little use except for sowing, the surplus stock can only be disposed of at extremely low prices. Accordingly some wholesale seedsmen buy large quantities in the “glut season,” as it is termed, and store them until the same articles fail in crop. For instance, swede and turnip seeds, 1857 crop, could be bought everywhere at from 15 to 20 shillings per bushel; but owing to the destruction of the roots in the winter of 1859, seedsmen in 1860 had to pay the growers 50s. per bushel. Now, in 1860 there were wholesale houses selling those seeds which they had by them for the same price. Such people can, it is true, warrant their seeds to be genuine, as they well know how much turnip-seeds deteriorate by keeping; the mixing of this with good seed is still a species of adulteration; and if not mixed at all, we can then only say that the evil is so much the greater.
As an evidence of the amount of deterioration caused to turnip-seeds by keeping, we here re-produce the table of trials of ten sorts of good seeds made in September, 1860, in contrast with experiments from the same sample, in the same month of the present year (1862), premising that the samples were kept in what we should consider a dry but not too warm a temperature.
| Table 6.—Germination of Ten Sorts of Turnips. | ||||
| No. | Name. Copy of Label. | Came up 1860. Percent. | Came up 1862. Percent. | |
| 1 | Mousetail, 1859 | 96 | 46 | |
| 2 | Pomeranian or White Globe, 1859 | 86 | 44 | |
| 3 | Nimble Green Round, 1859 | 96 | 94 | |
| 4 | Lincolnshire New Red Globe, 1860 | 90 | 58 | |
| 5 | Yellow Tankard, 1859 | 92 | 62 | |
| 6 | Smart’s Mousetail, 1860 | 98 | 92 | |
| 7 | Green-topped Stone, 1860 | 84 | 88 | |
| 8 | Sutton’s Imperial Green Globe, 1860 | 98 | 80 | |
| 9 | Green-topped Scotch, 1860 | 90 | 86 | |
| 10 | Early Six-weeks, 1860 | 90 | 70 | |
| Came up (average) | = | 92 | 72 | |
| Failed | = | 8 | 28 | |