176 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. . [Jan., 



In the way of remedies we have, up to the present time, but little 

 to suggest. The fact that the trouble is in nature very similar to 

 the grape mildew, and that the use of flowers of sulphur has 

 proved the most effectual in the latter case, it is to be presumed 

 that it is also the remedy for the lettuce mould. There is this 

 difficulty in the use of sulphur in the case of lettuce; the foliage 

 is the portion both dusted and eaten, and unless the leaves are 

 thoroughly washed — as they ought to be any way — a sense or sus- 

 picion of eating sulphur would be developed that would tend to 

 greatly diminish the consumption of this excellent green, food. 

 Lime sprinkled upon the plants has proved of considerable value 

 in some cases as our correspondence indicates. 



In those localities, or rather on that soil, where the crop has 

 been ruined, it is suggested that the growth of lettuce be aban- 

 doned for a time, for there is no doubt but that the soil has become 

 foul, and an absence of the lettuce-plant is essential to the eradica- 

 tion, by death by starvation, of the minute fungus spores. 



The Raspberry Fungus. 



So soon as the leaves of the raspberry and blackberry bushes, 

 both the cultivated and those growing wild, have reached two- 

 thirds their natural size, and sometimes before, they are frequently 

 noticed to be covered on the underside with a number of large 

 patches of orange color. This spring I have received numerous 

 letters, containing specimens of the plants affected by this trouble, 

 with the anxioiis and important question: "what can we do; for 

 this disease is destroying whole rows of our raspberry bushes ? " 

 The trouble is a parasitic fungus — a little plant which sends its fine 

 microscopic filaments through the substance of the young growing 

 leaves, and after a short time breaks through the surface and de- 

 velops a vast multitude of minute spores constituting the fine dusty 

 powder with a rich orange color. This fungus, unlike the grape 

 mildew and other similar and comparatively slow acting parasites, 

 is so rapid in its development, and has its course so nearly run 

 when it shows itself, that up to the present no preventive has 

 been found. So soon as a bush is seen to be affected — and it usu- 

 ally attacks the whole raspberry plant if at all — the best way is to 

 cut it down and burn it at once, thus clearing the ground of a use- 

 less bush, and at the same time destroying a vast multitude of 

 spores, that would otherwise find their way to other bushes, and 

 there reproduce the trouble. 



