462 



FARMERS- REGISTER. 



[No. 8 



each,) per statute acre. They all agree, that 

 they have never had any rust on their wheat, 

 where this practice was adopted, though beibre, 

 they were greatly affected by it.* The expense 

 would be inconsiderable, since the tax on salt has 

 been taken off'. The uses of salt in animal lite, 

 prove how beneficial it would be to vegetables. In 

 animals, it is found to promote perspiration, and to 

 prevent corruption in the juices-^ and consequently 

 it is the moft likely means of checking the propa- 

 gation of fungi, and preventing that rottenness 

 and corruption, to which wheat is liable when it 

 becomes rusted. The doctrine is strongly sup- 

 ported by the following facts: 1. Rust is rarely 

 experienced in the immediate vicinity of the sea, 

 unless when the ground is greatly over manured;]; 

 2. When sea-ooze is employed as a manure, 

 impregnated as it is with saline particles, the crop 

 generally escapes that disease; and, 3. Rust is 

 little known in Flanders, where Dutch ashes, full 

 of salts, are in use. 



8. As land in too rich a state, is apt to produce 

 rust, it is found to be an effectual remedy, if, pre- 

 vious to a crop of wheat, the dung be applied to a 

 smothering crop, as tares, hemp, or cole-seed, on 

 strong lands, or potatoes on light soils. Indeed 

 wheat after cole-seed, is scarcely ever known to be 

 rusted. § The general culture of that article, and 

 the use of Dutch ashes, impregnated with saline 

 matter as a manure, tend grea ly to that exemp- 

 tion from rust, by which wheat in Flanders is dis- 

 tinguished. Potatoes, when the crop is large, have 

 sometimes had the same effect. A field was sown 

 with wheat, partly after summer fallow, partly af- 

 ter clover ley, and partly alter potatoes; the two 

 former portions were found rusted, whereas the 

 part where the potatoes had been sown, produced 

 grain, plump and equal, and only deficient about 

 one-tenth of the usual quantity. Wheat, after a 

 thin crop of potatoes, is, however, often rusted in 

 this country; but in Flanders, where the wheat is 

 never materially injured by rust, potatoes are con- 

 sidered, in its highest cultivated district, (the Pays 

 de Waes,) as the best preparation for that crop. 

 If too much dung occasion the propagation of 

 fungi, which there is reason to believe is the case, 

 smothering crops, by exhausting and diminishing 

 the strength of dung, may take away that ten- 

 dency. 



9. Mr. Clack, the respectable Rector of Milton 

 in Devonshire, whose communication on the sub- 

 ject of rust is one of the most valuable hitherto 

 published, strongly recommends the cutting down 

 all those plants which retain the fungi, in their va- 

 rious stages, even during the severest frosts of 

 winter, and which, on the return of a little mild or 

 humid weather in spring, are thought to contribute 



* Particularly Mr. Henry Sickler, whose practice 

 was communicated in a letter to a respectable Member 

 of Parliament. Davies Gilbert, Esq. — See also the evi- 

 dence of Dr. Paris, before the Salt Committee of 1818, 

 p. 30. 



t Code of Health, 4th edition, p. 178. 



t Essex Report, vol. I. p. 301; Dorset Report, p. 

 209. 



§ General Report of Scotland, vol. ii p. 530; 

 Dumfriesshire Report, p. 31, and Appendix, No. VI. 

 p. 581. 



to affect, with an astonishing rapidity, the earliest 

 leaves and shoots of' those vegetables, whic'i are 

 congenial to their propagation. These fungi flou- 

 rish with such an extraordinary luxuriance, that 

 in the course of a week or two, they seem to ar- 

 rive at maturity, and disseminate their baneful ef- 

 fects throughout thousands of acres, on which de- 

 pend the profit of the husbandman, and a large 

 proportion of the sustenance of the commu- 

 nity.* 



Among the common plants, the colts-foot, the 

 corn marigold, and the common couch, are said to 

 be so favorable to the growth of these fungi, that 

 no field can be free from rust, in which they are 

 to be met with. Every exertion ought therefore 

 to be made, for their total extirpation. 



Some evergreens seem to retain these fungi, 

 during the coldest seasons, as the box, when 

 planted in low and damp situations, and above all, 

 the bramble-bush, which ought to be cut down as 

 close as possible, in hedges and coppices, at least 

 once or twice a year. The abele, or silver poplar, 

 and willows, ought likewise to be kept under, as 

 some of the chief causes of rust in their neighbor- 

 hood. 



Several trees also, retain old fungi during win- 

 ter, on their barks, as the black alder, the com- 

 mon willow, the hazel, the birch, and sometimes 

 oak coppice. The barberry retains this source of 

 mischief in any fissure or cleft in the bark occa- 

 sioned by injury, exhibiting numerous black pos- 

 tules. These should be cut out. The contradic- 

 tory accounts regarding the effects of the barber- 

 ry-bush, in occasioning rust, may thus be explain- 

 ed. Where the skin is smooth and entire, the bar- 

 berry does little or no mischief; where there are 

 fissures in the bark, it proves the source of de- 

 struction. Hence also, when the barberry- bush is 

 small, it docs not occasion mildew. f 



The practice of cutting the hedges, when a 

 crop of wheat is sown, ought to bo universally 

 adopted, as a likely means of lessening the quan- 

 tity of fungi, that, would otherwise injure the crop. 

 By this attention to the improvement of his 

 hedges, and the extirpation of weeds, Mr. Clack's 

 glebe, on which, from time immemorial, the 

 wheat was subject to rust, has been rendered 

 nearly as free from that disorder as the open fields 

 of his neighbors.J 



10. A curious and most important circumstance, 

 connected with the rust in wheat, remains to be 

 stated. In the northern counties in England, 



* Devon Report, p. 436. 



f Bedfordshire Report, p. 379. — The facts brought 

 forward in the County Reports, Cheshire, p. 134, 

 Cambridge, p. 131, seem to prove the fatal elfects of 

 the barberry, in occasioning rust. 



X In a recent communication, dated 16th June 1817, 

 Mr. Clack states, that in the year 1811, he sowed a 

 field of wheat after clover, which was notorious for 

 rust; but the crop produced next year was the best in 

 the neighborhood, which he attributes to his continued 

 attention, in cutting out such shrubs, as were conge- 

 nial to the growth of rust, in the adjoining coppice and 

 hedges; and to the consolidation of the soil, by filling 

 it with sheep after sowing, for which purpose, a num- 

 ber should be collected, and slowly driven in a com- 

 pact body, so as to give a simultaneous effect to the 

 land. 



