prevail, the total annual loss would equal 4,000,000 rupees.* Mr. 

 Barclay, in a communication to the " Transactions of the Agri- 

 cultural and Horticultural Times of India," quotes Captain 

 Herman, who reported that he had seen, so long back as 1827, 

 " rich sheets of uninterrupted wheat cultivation for twenty 

 miles by ten in the valley of Narbadda, so entirely destroyed 

 by this disease that the people would not go to the cost of 

 gathering one field in four." 



Japan. 



Mr. Barclay also quotes the Director of the Agricultural 

 Experiment Station of Indiana, lately in the service of the 

 Government of Japan, wno states that in the northern parts of 

 that country, where the Government has made strenuous and 

 costly exertions to supplant rice-culture by wheat-growing, the 

 latter crop is frequently ruined, and on the average damaged to 

 the extent of 20 per cent, by rust. 



THE CAUSE OF MILDEW OR RUST. 



Mildew on wheat-plants has been known in Great Britain for 

 over 300 years, according to the records. Probably, however, it 

 has been present upon them since the first cultivation of wheat. 

 That it is a very ancient affection is proved by frequent 

 references to it,, and deprecatory remarks concerning its baneful 

 influences in old Greek and Latin writings. The first published 

 account of it, ascribing it to fungoid origin was, it is believed, 

 given by an Italian, Fontana, in 1767.1 Persoon gave a more 

 correct and elaborate description of the fungus in 1797, and 

 named it Puccinia, after Puccini, a Florentine professor.^ The 

 first highly-magnified figures of it were made by Bauer in 1805. 

 These admirable coloured figures were drawn to illustrate the 

 account of the mildew written by Sir Joseph Banks, President of 

 the Royal Society, and published as a separate essay, which was 

 published also in the " Annals of Agriculture," by Arthur Young. 

 Sir Joseph Banks had a very good idea of the cause of mildew, or 

 " the blight " in wheat, and of the action of fungus upon it by 

 its spores " germinating and pushing their minute roots, no 

 doubt, though these have not yet been traced, into the cellular 

 texture beyond the bark where they draw their nourishment, by 

 intercepting the sap that was intended by nature for the nutri- 

 ment of the grain." Sir Joseph Banks also considered it "more 

 than probable that the parasitic fungus of the barberry and that 

 of wheat are one and the same species, and that the seed is 



Rust and Mildew in India, by the late A. Barclay, M B., F.L.S. 

 Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, vol. 30, January, 1892. 

 f Crittogamia agraria, pel Dr. Comes, 

 t Synopsis Methodica Fungorum. Gottingen, 1797. 

 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xliii. 



