.ON THE BLIGHT IN WHEAT. 341 



3dhj. Sowing wheat too late in the autumn, (which is 

 too common,) especially in poor land and exposed situa- 

 tions, where the roots have not time to establish them- 

 selves before the winter comes on, and vegetation is totally 

 at a stand. 



Now as these causes have, in consequence of the ad- Probably Jn- 

 Tance in the price of wheat, occurred more frequently f crease <l°f late. 

 iate years than formerly ; it is probable that the assertion 

 u that the blight on wheat has increased of late years" 

 may be true. For, 



1st. It has not been uncommon to sow land with wheat From sowing 



every third year, instead of every fourth or fifth: and as wheatto ° fre- 



, quently, 



the land, in the interim, has been under crops, the very 



nature of which is to make land light, and no fallow year 

 having been allowed to get it close again; the crops, 

 though abundant in straw, have not had strength enough to 

 support them till harvest, and have been laid by the rains, 

 and thereby become a prey to the blight. 



c 2d. It has been, very much the practice of late years to or after tur- 

 sow wheat after turnips, and very clean crops have been mps ' 

 produced thereby. But this system is wrong: the tur- 

 nips arc eaten before they are wanted, and the wheat is 

 sown a month too late; and being necessarily late ripe , is 

 often attacked by the blight. 



3d. It has been also a frequent practice to sow wheat or after pota- 

 after potatoes; and this system is still worse: the land is toeb * 

 rendered too light for wheat, and the seed time is much too 

 late, unless it be in deep rich land, where the wheat plants 

 will grow during the whole of the winter. 



4th. And even the practice of sowing wheal after clover and in some 

 has been carried to too great an extent on light land ; espe- cases c over " 

 daily where the land is nearly tired of clover. It en- 

 courages the slug, and the wire-worm, which destroy a 

 considerable part of the wheat plants, leaving the residue a 

 thin unequal crop, which the blight seldom fails to attack, 

 and frequently to ruin. 



To sum up the whole: — If it can be proved, (and every General direc- 

 man who is a farmer must have observed it,) that all ueak tlons * 

 crops of wheat, and particularly all late-ripe crops, are 

 peculiarly subject to Ulight; it should be the great object 



of 



