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._ +---+-------------------------------------+--------+--------+ | | |Came up |Came up | |No.| Name. Copy of Label. | 1860. | 1862. | | | |Percent.|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 | +---+-------------------------------------+--------+--------+ These figures are interesting as showing that though the different sorts are not affected equally, yet the seed of 1859 failed on the average to the extent of 38·8 per cent., as against 24·6 for the seed of 1860, and 28 as the average of the whole samples. Such is the great difference between two and three year old seeds.