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Afeiv Observations on the Fung us- Blight in Wheat, founded chiejly 

 on the Discoveries of Fontana and Sir Joseph Banks, and ad- 

 dressed to the Phytologist Club, on the 25 fh of September, 1852. 

 By Edward Newman. 



I HAVE had an unusual number of letters from the country on the 

 blight in wheat, many of them probably addressed to me in conse- 

 quence of my known attention to blight generally, and totally without 

 reference to my editorship of the ' Phytologist.' Many of them are 

 little more than inquiries ; and I think I may say that none were 

 intended for publication. Still, I take this opportunity of address- 

 ing a few general observations in reply, believing that when printed 

 and circulated they may excite some interest among those whom 

 the blight more especially affects. I will in the outset take leave 

 to remark, that I have in almost all instances observed too great 

 a tendency on the part of wheat-growers to speculate on remote 

 causes of blight, and too small a disposition to make those observa- 

 tions, and try those simple experiments of manure, season of sowing, 

 rotation of crops, variety of seed, &c., which offer possible, and even 

 probable, chances of prevention or cure. With regard to speculation 

 on remote causes, I have been really grieved to find in how many 

 instances the wildest hypotheses have been currently received in 

 place of facts clearly and positively ascertained. Science has done 

 all in her power to inform the farmer aright ; and the farmer has done 

 nothing whatever to assist Science in her investigations. It is impos- 

 sible for a scientific man to converse with a farmer on any subject 

 connected with the well-being of his crops, without finding that he 

 who ought by his position and opportunity to be the practical man, 

 is in reality the most ignorant and wild of theorists ; while the man of 

 science, who might, from his occupation among books, and his closet- 

 study, be supposed the theorist, is in reality the practical man, — has 

 indeed possessed himself of that knowledge of Nature's laws which 

 the farmer, whom those laws especially concern, has been totally neg- 

 lecting. I allude to this subject with much regret, the same conclu- 

 sions having been forced on my mind repeatedly before, during my 

 prolonged examination of the insect-blight of turnips and other crops. 



The blight which has lately proved injurious to the wheat is none 

 other than that described so accurately by Felice Fontana, an Italian, 

 in 1767, and subsequently figured by Sowerby,in his ' English Fungi,'* 



* U nder the name of Uredo Frumenti, t. 140. It is the Puocinia Graminis of Persoon. 



