AMERICAN JOURNAL 



OF 



AGRICULTURE AND SCIENCE. 



No. XVIL SEPTEMBER, 1847. 



BRAND IN THE CEREALS. 



Ussajj towards a more thorough knowledge of the various kinds of Brand 

 in the. Cereals and Blight hi Corn, translated from the German of j^. 

 C. Cor da, for this Journal, 



BY E. GOODRICH SMITH, OF THE PATENT OFFICE.* 



The respected reader of this essay, will pardon the freedom 

 with which the author illustrates an old long known subject, in a 

 manner probably somewhat strange to farmers, or if he should 

 find set down in these sketches only real matters of fact without 

 any display of scientific learning. The author likewise proffers 

 no copious literature or reproduction of the views of past observers, 

 although nearly all the writers on the subject are known to him 

 from Theophrastus to Tessier, Strauss, Bulliard, Meyen and lin- 

 ger; among whom he would notice the works of Banks, Fries 

 and linger as the best guides. The author's object is to prepare 

 a foundation of facts derived from the internal structure and phy- 

 siological texture, without aiming to admit or oppose the views, 

 theories and so-termed knowledge of others. In all patholoo-ical 

 inquiries, no one of the authors, so far as I am acquainted, has 

 regarded the anatomical structure of the plants themselves. Usu- 

 ally the so-termed observations are set forth, which are contra- 

 dicted either oy their own obscurity or by similar observations of 

 the author himself, or those of others who succeed him. Such a 

 course does not consist with the views of the author of these 

 pages, and therefore he begs the respected reader to receive the 

 following remarks as the result of more than twenty years' obser- 

 vations, during which period he has been occupied with the par- 

 ticular study of the parasitic fungi. At the same time he wishes 

 this first epitome of pathological investigations into the parasitic 



* Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1847, by E. Emmons, in the clerk's 

 office for the Northern District of New York. 



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