STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 173 



ESSAY ON MILDEW. 



BY JUDGE WILLIAM DANIELS, OF SAN JOSE. 



A PAPER READ BEFORE THE ANNUAL MEETING, JANUARY 29TH, 1864. 



This is a minute parasitic plant belonging to an extensive family of 

 Fungi, of the class Oryptogamia. The seeds of this plant are so minute 

 that they cannot be discerned without the aid of a powerful magnifier. 

 It is indigenous to every country in the known world. The seeds have 

 so little specific gravity that they will float in the atmosphere for miles, 

 though possessing, at the same time, all the requisites of germinating 

 and propagating their species. In the ground it is universal, but most 

 abundant in rich heavy soil, under the shade of trees, especially those of 

 heavy umbrageous foliage, and it is very fond of getting into rooms that 

 are no<t properly ventilated. It is quite at home in an untidy kitchen. 

 It will make a lodgment in a pile of clothes that has not been properly 

 aired. It will get into a bundle of hay or straw, or into the middle of a 

 stack of a hundred tons, that has not been properly cured. It will settle 

 and take root immediately on the fractured cuticle of the leaves, young 

 shoots, and fruit of the grape vine, the peach, the apple, and the goose- 

 berry. It will adhere at once to any fissure in the stalk or blades of the 

 wheat plant, the leaves and young shoots of the rose bush, the chrysan- 

 themum, or, indeed, upon any plant whatever where extravasated sap 

 has been forced out of its proper channels. Its name is legion, and its 

 depredations on vegetation are often truly alarming. It is the bane of 

 the husbandman and the vine dresser, sometimes destroying nearly the 

 whole crop of the farmer, in the shape of rust, and at other times de- 

 stroying the crop of grapes in a whole country, as was the case in France 

 a few years ago, and also in the Valley of Santa Clara, to a partial ex- 

 tent, a few years since. Its ravages are incalculable, and I do not know 

 of airy good that can result from its existence, except it be to plague 

 careless, indolent, and ignorant men and women ; but it cannot live in a 

 healthy plant, nor in a household where there is a careful, industrious, 

 and intelligent housekeeper. It is quite harmless, except where disease 

 or decomposition has alread}- begun. How, then, shall we treat this ter- 



