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human constitution, and the wide differences they exhibit 

 in their qualities in different countries. 



Such are some of the most destructive diseases of the 

 cereal crops ; and they show to us in a most striking 

 manner how the welfare, nay the very existence of man 

 himself, may be endangered by the growth of the 

 minutest and humblest plants. It is not difficult to 

 imagine the fearful consequences that would ensue, were 

 these plants to spread universally over all the cereal 

 crops, and convert their nutritious substances into black 

 rottenness and ashes. Not all the vast revenues and 

 resources of England would avail to avert the dreadful 

 results. All the other riches in the world, failing the 

 riches of our golden harvest-fields, were as worthless as 

 the false notes of the forger. How precarious then is 

 the independence of the most independent ! As we ap- 

 proach the season of harvest, we are within a month or 

 two of absolute starvation. Were the rust, or the mil- 

 dew, or the smut to blight our fields ; were each spore of 

 the many millions which each individual of these plants 

 disseminates, to germinate and become fertile on the grains 

 on which it alighted, the scourge would be more terrible 

 than the bloodiest and most devastating campaign ; the 

 rich and the poor, the nobleman and the beggar, the 

 Queen and her subjects, would alike be swept into a 

 common ruin. But the covenant promise made to Noah 

 endures from age to age, and from year to year, in 

 all its integrity, even in the most unpropitious cir- 

 cumstances ; and that kind and watchful Providence, 

 which supplies the large family of mankind with its 

 daily bread, arrests the development and dispersion of 



