[ 19. ] 



Article X)fl. 

 On the Smut in IVbeat contlntted, by the fame, 



SIR, 



\fiL Befperandumy is a motto that every man 

 who wifhes to inveftigate abftrufe fubjeds, 

 ought always to have before him. Is not fmut ball 

 a fubftance in its nature generated through a wheat 

 grain and its plant? Strange and abfurd as this 

 hypothcfis may appear to us at firft fight, yet if we 

 refled on the various phenomena in the animal and 

 vegetable fyftem, that daily prefent themfelves to 

 \is, we (hall perhaps think it not altogether unwor- 

 thy of our attention and enquiry. The oftrich, wc 

 arc told, trufh her egg to warm fand to produce its 

 progeny ; the cuckow, we know, in our own coun- 

 try, depends on the incubation of the hedge-fparrow 

 to -produce, and afterwards to its foftering care to 

 nourilh its young, till it is able to procure fufte- 

 nance for itfelf. We fee the mifletoe produced and 

 nourifhed by various kinds of trees j the like of 

 many fpccics of mofs ; cabbage- feed producing col- 

 liflowers, and colliflower feed cabbages, and mules 

 partaking of both. We know divers infeds are 

 produced on and within vegetables ; but to come 

 nearer to the queftion: as well as fmut ball, coded 



^rows 



