SOLON ROBINSON, 1840 145 



that what an immense crop was on the ground in that 

 single county; in a county too, that the land was pur- 

 chased of the Indians in 1832. 



Some of the best fields have been cut, but the grain is 

 poor stuff. Some of it does not weigh more than 30 lbs. 

 to the bushel. I have correct information 150 miles 

 south and 100 miles wide, east and west, all of which is 

 a most fertile wheat soil, and immense crops were on 

 the ground, and almost entirely blasted. There are, how- 

 ever, some good crops of spring wheat, though very little 

 of it improved kinds. 



This is certainly the greatest loss by rust that I was 

 ever acquainted with. And in all this vast extent, I don't 

 think there is a barberry bush. So that is not the cause. 

 That the fly is the cause, as advanced by the Laporte 

 writer is something new, and I must doubt the correct- 

 ness of the theory. 



But what is the cause? There is one fact worth notic- 

 ing, that fields situated in places sheltered by woodland 

 suffered least. And even by the side of fences, where 

 in the fore part of summer the wheat was the most rank 

 and luxuriant, it was much better than in the middle of 

 the field. Why was it so ? Was it not owing to the more 

 rapid growth in June, of that which was the most back- 



of the rust in our wheat this year, I do not entertain a doubt. I 

 have examined my own, and divers of my neighbors' stubble fields 

 very faithfully, and the conclusion to which I have come is, that 

 every spear of wheat in which the fly deposited its nit, last fall, 

 was killed. They survived until the warm weather ensued in the 

 spring, when they died. From this bunch of dead wheat, there 

 sprang up new shoots or stalks, in like manner as they would come 

 up around the trunk of a sapling which had been girdled. I have 

 enumerated as many as 20 dead spears in one bunch. Now, for 

 the wherefores of the rust. These new shoots came forward with 

 amazing rapidity; consequently they accumulate an undue quantity 

 of sap; and the stalks having more juice than it was possible 

 for them to retain, and the extension became so great, that the 

 sap was forced out at the spiricle or pores; the premature death 

 of the stalk ensued and a consequent shrinking of the berry. This 

 juice or sap being of a glutinous substance, adhered to the surface 

 of the stalk and became a kind of rust. — Laporte Whig. 



