246 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



The high cultivation of plants, produces great and permanent 

 changes in their forms. The native and wild species are often 

 either smaller, or less valuable in point of economical use. A 

 departure from the common type may be continued by frequent 

 raising from the seed produced by some unusual and abnormal 

 form. In this way we have our finest pears, and the lesser 

 fruits, such as strawberries, currants, gooseberries, &c. So, 

 likewise, the more ordinary sorts came from the successive seed- 

 lings of some accidental variety of species with acerb or harsh 

 juices; also many of our grasses and grain are highly improved 

 in this way. Lately, I saw some plants of the common Dutch 

 clover, or red clover, where four, five, and six leaflets (or leaves, 

 as they are called) were strikingly and unusually predominant 

 over the usual number of three. If a permanent variety could 

 be produced, it would afford better chance that clover-hay, be 

 not so stalky, but more abounding in leaves. 



Some striking facts in the diseases of cultivated vegetables 

 and plants, botanical research has brought to light. Absurdities 

 and errors, like baleful ignorance, flee before the rays of truth. 

 In the wheat districts of England, the rust, which infests the 

 barberry bush, is believed to be connected with the rust which 

 injures that grain. Something of the same idea prevails among 

 some of our farmers ; only I have heard the evil attributed to the 

 dust or pollen of the flowers of the barberry, or perhaps to the 

 odor of its blossoms ! The botanist, with his microscope, has 

 shown the fallacy of the first statement, in the indication of two 

 distinct species of minute fungi, two distinct kinds of rust, (for 

 the rust is a minute and organized plant) and has proved, from 

 experiment and observation, that neither of these species can 

 grow on any other vegetable than the one on which it is 

 found ; in other words, that the wheat-rust is one thing, and the 

 barberry-rust is another and quite different. The absurdity of 

 the disease of the wheat being produced as supposed in the sec- 

 ond statement, is too apparent to an intelligent or thinking per- 

 son, and scarcely needs refutation, although it shows under 

 what distortion a tradition, or an error, is frequently transmitted. 

 So, the sudden blight of grain, when a few hours have witnessed 

 the devastation from a healthy state to absolute ruin, has puz- 



