196 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



FEEDING COEN SMUT TO DAIRY COWS. 



BY CLINTON D. SMITH. 



Bulletin No. 137. — Farm Department. 



Prof. C. F. Wheeler, the botanist of the station, reports as follows con- 

 cerning the life history of corn smut and precautions to be observed to 

 avoid its farther extension: 



"Life History. — In an address delivered before the Agricultural Club 

 at Berlin, Germany, February 11, 1888, Dr. Oscar Brefeld first gave to 

 the world the true life history of corn smut. For twelve years he had 

 experimented with the greatest care, both in the field and in the labora- 

 tory, to learn the actual behavior of the smuts of cereals. 



It had been proven before this time that the smuts of wheat, barley 

 and oats enter the sprouting grain when the young stem is less than 

 one-quarter of an inch in length and grow upwards with the growth 

 of the stem until the grains in the head are formed, when they at once 

 seize upon this storehouse of prepared food, appropriating it to their 

 own use. Until 1887 it was supposed that corn smut followed the same 

 course of development. 



The crowning glory of Brefeld's discovery is in proving that corn 

 smut may infect the plants at any time before their full maturity, and 

 moreover that the ripened smut spores themselves do not directly, by 

 falling upon the corn plants, produce the disease. 



The black dusty masses of ripened smut boils contain multitudes of 

 dark brown spores well protected with thick walls, making them capable 

 of resisting extremes of temperature and moisture and retaining their 

 germinating power for a number of years. 



These spores were found by Brefeld to germinate readily outside and 

 away from corn plants whenever placed in moist fresh manure. He 

 also found that they would not germinate readily in pure water, but 

 that in manure water the spores germinate rapidly, forming a multitude 

 of sliort branches which produced secondary spores in great numbers. 

 These secondary spores are formed in the air, on the surface of water, 

 also beneath it, and are easily carried by winds to fields, falling upon all 

 parts of corn plants. Dew and rain carry these small spores inside the 

 leaf sheaths and the husks of the ears, where they at once send out 

 germ tubes that enter the plants, producing a local disease (the well 



