74 AORICULTURAL ESSAYS. 



When"" rye is sown successively on the same soil, the stub- 

 ble should be ploughed under as soon as the crop is taken off, 

 which helps to improve the ground and serves to destroy the 

 seeds of weeds. It should then lie until about the first of 

 September, then ploughed again, and the next crop harrowed 

 in. Some have supposed that m this way the crops will in- 

 crease in quantity. 



Rye is subject to a distemper called the spur. The grains, 

 which are affected with it, are larger than the rest, mostly 

 crooked, bitter to the taste, projecting beyond their husks, 

 dark coloured, rough, and deeply furrowed from end to end. 

 This kind of diseased grain sometimes proves very destructive 

 to those who eat it. In some parts of France, where the dis- 

 ease prevails most, the peasants who eat it are liable to be at- 

 tacked with a dry gangrene in the extreme parts of the body, 

 which causes those parts to fall off, almost without pain. "The 

 Hotel Dieu at Orleans," says Duhamel, "has had many of 

 these miserable objects who had not any thing more remaining 

 than the bare trunk of the body, and yet lived in that condi- 

 tion for several days." It is not every year that the spur pro- 

 duces these effects, and it is said that if the grain be kept a 

 certain time before it is eaten it will not be hurtful. It is 

 thought however, that no very bad effects have been known 

 in this country from eating this kind of rye. 



When we consider that rye fiour mixed with corn meal 

 makes a wholesome and valuable bread, and can be raised on 

 light soils, which under' some circumstances may be de- 

 voted to that crop better than to any other, and when it is 

 considered, too, that it is not an exhausting crop, the raising it 

 cannot be considered an unimportant article of domestic econ- 

 omy. 



Rye should never be sown on wet soils, nor even upon sandy 

 soils, when the subsoil is retentive of moisture. 



Upon all soft lands which have received manure, this grain 

 thrives in perfection, and if once covered, it is believed, it will 

 stand a drought afterwards that would consume any of the 

 culmiferpus tribe. 



Where it is sown for pasture, as has been mentioned, it 

 should, after having been fed, be suffered to grow up to a con- 

 siderable green crop, before it is turned under with the plough,^ 

 and with such culture it may be considered a certain means of 

 improving the soil, not only for another crop of rye, but for any 

 other crop, which is adapted to the nature of the soil. 



