204 EXPERIMEXTAL FARMS. 



64 VICTORIA, A. 1901 



planted at various places were turned chocolate brown on the sunny side in one day, 

 and many kinds of plants suffered severely. The injury to wheat was curiously local, 

 but I cannot discover any other possible reason for the aborted and scalded heads in 

 eome places. Very interesting specimens were sent in by Mr. Geo. Wise and Mr. 

 "W. S. Wallace, of Shellmouth, Man., with a complete account of the injury and its 

 occurrence on various soils and under different exposures. The affected area was 

 eight miles long, north and south, and one mile wide. The injury to the ears was 

 such that no theory could satisfactorily account for it, the ears being blighted and 

 shrivelled up, sometimes at the tip, most frequently at the base, five or six florets being 

 whitened and empty, and sometimes in the middle, with good grain forming at the 

 base and at the tip. Frost and heat would either of them account for some of the 

 characteristics, but not all. The injury lasted a very short time, and the chief 

 peculiarity was that in adjoining fields grain at the same stage and apparently 

 under exactly the same conditions was uninjured. Another curious distortion of 

 stems of wheat plants was shown to me at Osier by Mr. Percy B. Grant, in which the 

 stem was swollen, hardened and thickened, and as a rule bent rather abruptly so as to 

 burst the sheath just above the top node of the stem. This attack resembled closely 

 the work of the Joint-worm (Isosoma). Mr. Grant wrote after considering the 

 matter carefully and examining many specimens : ' My opinion of the matter is that 

 the trouble is an excessive growth induced by the moist weather which came after a 

 prolonged period of exceedingly dry weather.' I quite agree with Mr. Grant in this 

 opinion, and so also do other botanists to whom I have shown the specimens. 



' Osier, Sask., September 5. — I am sending you to-day a bundle of about 20 more 

 or less injured stems ; all of these I cut off as near to the ground as possible, and all 

 were standing except those which had broken at the injured points and fallen over. 

 They show the swelling of the stem in various stages. I never saw this injury to 

 wheat until this summer. Beginning with the middle of the month of June we had a 

 spell of exceedingly hot and dry weather; the heat and drought gradually increasing 

 till the end of the month, when nearly all the grain was out in head, although the 

 straw was .only from 6 inches to a foot high. Large patches of stubble land were 

 materially injured by the want of moisture and, had the drought continued much 

 longer, the bulk of the crop would have been ruined. However, about July 1, heavy 

 rains set in, and there was an excess of moisture for nearly all the month. There was 

 plenty of warmth in the ground, which, together with the moisture, pushed forward 

 ;the growth at a rapid rate. The injured fields recovered rapidly, and those which had 

 lield their own during the dry spell sent up a rank growth. About a week after the 

 rains began, numbers of the wheat stems were noticed to be lodged. The lodging 

 continued for about a week and then stopped. The amount was variously estimated 

 from one-twentieth to one-tenth, according to the field, being worst on new land 

 (breaking) and least on summer fallow. The lodging was worst in the rankest spots 

 of any particular field. It was always the largest stems with the largest heads which 

 lodged. On closer examination, I found large numbers of stems still standing with 

 the stems much swollen above the joints, and I noticed that the lodged stems were also 

 swollen and had broken at the most distorted point. The swelling sometimes spread 

 several inches up the stem, but in most cases was confined to one point until the stem 

 biilged out 30 much that the sheath was burst and the inner stem protruded so much 

 as to bend almost at a right angle, when it broke and was blown over by the wind. I 

 found no lodged stems which did not show the swelling. The swollen stems which did 

 not lodge were perhaps a little later in maturing than the rest of the crop.' — Percy B. 

 Grant. 



CUTWORMS IN WHEAT. 



There was rather a serious outbreak of some kind of cutworm which attacked 

 wheat fields in Manitoba. I was informed by the Department of Agriculture for that 

 province, at the end of May last, that a great deal of harm had been done in the 



