8 April, 1907] Take-all and its Control. 253 



SECOND YEAR. 



More advanced model drawing and explanatory sketching. 



Elementary mechanical drawing and elementary building construction, 

 to be connected with the practical wood-work and metal-work executed in 

 the school work-shops. 



Sloyd and Farm-handiwork. 



During the first year, students will work through a slightly modified 

 course of Sloyd wood-work as practised in State schools, and, when they 

 have gained sufficient knowledge of and dexterity in the use of tools, will 

 proceed to more difficult exercises including the joints and a study of the 

 methods used in constructing farm-buildings and the construction of .such 

 m.odels and articles as may be included in the general term " farm-handi- 

 work." 



TAKE-ALL AXD ITS CONTROL. 



G. //. Robinson. Assistant to Vegetable Pathologist. 



A dry summer followed by a wet winter seems to aiford the most 

 favorable conditions for the development of take- all and whiteheads in our 

 wheat crops, diseases which have been shown to be due to the attacks of a 

 fungus known as Ofhiobolus graminis Sacc. Take-all is the result of a 

 virulent attack of the fungus, arising from infection at a very early stage 

 in the life of the wheat plant and it is scarcely possible to mistake the 

 disease for any other. If ]>atches, not being clay pans, are seen on which 

 nearly all the plants are dead, a number of stools both large and small 

 should be lifted and the earth carefully washed away from the roots. 

 If in a considerable proportion of the plants thus washed the buttsfor an 

 inch or so appear quite black and low down on the inside of the outer 

 sheaths small black bodies about the size of pinheads are seen, then it is 

 practically certain that the take-all fungus is the destructive agent, par- 

 ticularly if the roots have a tendency to break off close to the butt when 

 the plants are pulled. The blackened appearance of the butt, it may be 

 noted, is much more easily seen when quite wet. A milder attack of the 

 fungus, producing the disease known as whiteheads, is not so readilv 

 recognised since it is often confused with tip-burn, a condition in which 

 the upper portion of the head turns white and fails to produce grain while 

 the lower jDortion of the ear yields normal grain. In whiteheads however 

 the whole of the ear is white and of much the same colour as the rest 

 of the plant and what little grain is produced is poor and shrivelled. Tip- 

 burn thus is the death of a portion, rarely the whole., of the ear, the 

 other parts of the plant remaining alive, and is due to a scorching wind 

 during the flowering period, while in whiteheads the whole plant dies 

 as the result of the attack of a fungus on the roots and base of the stem. 



Though much has been done in working out the life-historv of the take- 

 all fungus, still our knowledge is incomplete, and as a consequence the 

 measures recommended for its suppression might perhaps be improved 

 upon as the result of sustained investigation and experiment under ordinary 

 farm conditions. Laboratory work is an essential to success, particularly 

 in the early stages of an investigation, but sound practical measures for 



