30 STRONG URLXK AXD TOBACCO SMOKE. 



tlie one blooming with healtli, the ear just ready to 

 leave its last loving support and covering, to bend 

 downwards with its weight of fruit ; the other, stark and 

 stricken with a black disease, a lifeless and almost shape- 

 less mass of cankering dust. This appearance is caused 

 by smut, a fungus that attacks the barley plant during 

 its flowering, and destroys what, but for it, had become 

 a thing of l^eauty and of use. 



The smut is a very fine black powder, which has 

 entirely replaced the tissues that were developing into 

 flower and seed ; no trace of them being left, excepting 

 such as hold together quite feebly a rude, shapeless mass, 

 that was once almost a perfect flower. In what peculiar 

 way this fungus settles on its victim it is difficult to 

 imaoine, for we have seen that the inflorescence of the 

 plant is so carefully protected by the sheathing-leaves as 

 to render any attack upon it from without, even by the 

 deposit of minute gems floating in the air, scarcely pos- 

 sible. But there it is, all too plainly, and the reader 

 m.ay judge of its impalpable fineness when told that the 

 figures represent the spores of this fungus in a dry state, 

 and in water, magnified 400 diameters. 



If I have been successful in describing the barley 

 plant, and have made its life-history intelligible, the 

 reader cannot fail to perceive how admirably Nature has 

 adapted it for the growth and protection of its flowers. 

 She has lod2;ed them with amazins; skill within a series 

 of folding leaves, whose convolutions form around it a 

 covering five times repeated. She has further endowed 



