FUNGOUS AND BACTERIAL DISEASES 



213 



types. It may be possible for each pupil to make a table 

 giving for each fruit, vegetable, and farm crop the loss caused 

 by fungi that is, to answer the question, What part of the 

 half -billion-dollar tax does my home pay? A suggestion for 

 such a table is given below. 



LOSSES CAUSED BY FUNGI ON A GRAIN FARM OF 320 ACRES l 



National and world problem. The general situation is aptly 

 expressed by the complaint heard on every hand: 



The world is not fit to live in any more, and it 's getting worse and 

 worse every year. We never used to hear about all these new-fangled 

 diseases all the time, and everything didn't use to rot and smut and 

 blight when I was a girl back on the old farm. 



This is literally true and for several good reasons. People 

 did not then know what was eating them out of house and 



1 Wheat is supposed to be affected with stinking smut, which Duggar says 

 sometimes takes "from one half to two thirds of a crop" of some sections. 

 Loose smut, corn smut, and early blight are the fungi supposed to have 

 attacked the oats, corn, and potatoes respectively. Estimates are not ex- 

 cessive. The percentages for the wheat, oats, and corn are figured by count- 

 ing 100 stalks taken at random in ten different parts of the field. (Save 

 several of these bundles of wheat or oats for demonstration in the labo- 

 ratory and at neighborhood meetings.) The potatoes are estimated from 

 usual results in case of sprayed and unsprayed field plots. The cost of 

 treating the wheat and oats with formalin would have been a trifling 

 insurance against the loss incurred. 



2 Cost of three sprayings and one pruning for blight, bitter rot, etc. 



