68 On Smut in Wheat. 



tally extirpated. Should this popular opinion, like many 

 ancient prejudices, be found to belong to the catalogue 

 of vulgar errors, the sooner it is detected the better. 



But to proceed, — Mr. William Young, in his paper, 

 read at our last meeting, well describes the progress of 

 the disease called smut, at Rockland and the neigh- 

 bourhood, in Delaware State, where the damage occa- 

 sioned by it, appears to have been very considerable. 



The seed had been used four years successively, and 

 where it had afterwards been sown, there the disease 

 appeared, and no where else. He attributes it, with ma- 

 ny other writers, to imperfect or infected seed, and con- 

 cludes that it seems to be a hereditary disease : this at 

 the first view, seems at least somewhat plausible, as a 

 disease may be hereditary (as we often see in the ani- 

 mal kingdom) without affecting all the offspring of the 

 diseased parent; but can we believe that any washing 

 can remove an hereditary taint? The smut indeed has 

 been considered by many AVTiters as very infectious, 

 yet how can we reconcile this with the experience of 

 others who have raised sound ears from smutty seed, 

 as has been hinted, or with the fact of a smutty ear be- 

 ing surrounded by various sound ones, without com- 

 municating the disease? It were to be wished, howe- 

 ver, that the principal cultivators of wheat would pursue 

 Mr. Young's laudable example, in making accurate ob- 

 servations on the rise and progress of the disease, and 

 the different methods of treatment. 



Analysis of the Smut. 



A foreigner, M. Chantran, on analysing the smut, 

 found it yielded an acid to boiling water, which reden- 



