52. British Ui'cdinecB and UstilaginecB. 



It is quite unnecessary to quote any further from Mr. 

 Young's correspondents upon this point. 



The injurious influence of the barberry was, however, a 

 matter of observation only at this time. Various sugges- 

 tions were made as to the cause of this : some affirmed the 

 barberry bush exhaled a noxious effluvium ; others, that 

 the pollen of its flowers poisoned the wheat; others, again, 

 that it appropriated to itself all the nourishment from the 

 soil in its vicinity. 



In 1805, however, Sir Joseph Banks, in his paper on 

 " Wheat Mildew," alluding to the subject before us, men- 

 tions the belief as being prevalent amongst farmers, but 

 scarcely credited by botanists, and points out the resem- 

 blance the yellow fungus on barberry has to rust, although 

 it is larger. He says,* " Is it not more than possible 

 that the parasitic fungus of the barberry and that of wheat 

 are one and the same species, and that the seed is trans- 

 ferred from the barberry to the corn } " 



The suggestion of our eminent countryman was soon 

 put to the test of experiment by a totally independent 

 observer. 



The honour of being the first to demonstrate the con- 

 nection between the barberry yEcidium and the wheat 

 mildew belongs to a Danish schoolmaster, who lived in the 

 village of Hammel, near Aarhus, in Jutland, at the begin- 

 ning of the present century. In 18 18, the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society of Denmark published a paper by Schoeler, 

 " On the Pernicious Influence which the Barberry Bush 

 exercises on Cereals." f This paper was almost over- 

 looked until Mr. Nielsen brought it under notice in 1874, 

 in his capacity as Consulting Botanist to the Royal Agri- 



* Banks, "Annals of Agriculture," vol. xliii. p. 521. 



t Om Schoeler, " Berberissens skudelige Indflydelse paa Sceden," Landcc- 

 komminske Tidender (iSlS), part viii. p. 289; Nielsen, Ugcskrift for Land- 

 iinvda, 1884. 



