0)1 the Blight in Corn. SUb 



■corn is approaching very nearly to ripeness ; it appears then 

 in the field in spots, which increase very rapidly in size, and 

 axe in calm weather somewhat circular, as if the disease took 

 its origin from a central position. 



May it not happen, then, that the fungus is brought 

 into the field in a few stalks of infected straw uncorrupted 

 among the mass of dung laid in the ground at the time of 

 sowing ? It must be confessed, however, that the clover 

 lays, on which no dung from the yard was used, were as 

 much infected last avitumn as the manured crops. The 

 immense multiplication of the disease in the last season, 

 seems however to account for this ; as the air was no doubt 

 frequently charged with seed for miles together, and depo- 

 sited it indiscriminately on all sorts of crops. 



It cannot however be an expensive precaution to search 

 diligently in the spring for young plants of \\heat infected 

 with the disease, and carefully to extirpate them, as well as 

 all grasses, for several are subject to this or a similar ma- 

 ladv, which has the appearance of orange- coloured or of 

 black stripes on their leaves, or on their straw ; and if ex- 

 perience shall prove that uncorrupted straw can carry the 

 disease with it into the field, it will cost the farmer but 

 little precaution to prevent any mixture of fresh straw 

 from being carried out with his rotten dung to the wheat 

 field. 



In a vear like the present, that offers so fair an oppor- 

 tunity, it will be useful to observe attentively whether 

 cattle in the straw-yard thrive better or worse on blighted 

 than on healthy straw. That blighted straw, retaining on 

 it the fungi that have robbed the corn of its flour, has in 

 it more nutritious matter than clean straw which has 

 yielded a crop of plump grain, cannot be doubted; the 

 question is, whether this nutriment in the form of iungi 

 does, or can be made to agree as well with the stomachs of 

 the animals that consume it, as it w ould do in that of straw 

 and corn. 



It cannot be improper in this place to remark, that al- 

 though the seeds of wheat are rendered, by the exhausting 

 power of the fungus, so lean and shrivelled that scarce anv 

 flour fit for the manufacture of bread can be obtained by 

 grinding them, these very seeds will, except, perhaps, in 

 flie very worst cases*, answer the purpose of seed corn as 

 well as the lairest and plumpest sample that can be ob- 



• Eighty Kf-iins of the most blighted wheat of tlic last year, tli;it could be 

 rbtaintd, wire ' own in pots in the hol-hou^e ; of thi-ac, stventy-two pto- 

 ducf d heahliy plant'. — a loss of ten per cent. only. 



X 3 tainedj 



