196 TILLERS OF THE GROUND CHAP. 



the beginning of July, up to which time the plants 

 remained free from disease. 



He found also that wheat plants at a distance 

 from the barberry bush remained permanently free 

 from disease, showing that the weather in itself did 

 not affect the question of blight or no blight. He 

 also showed that wheat plants free of blight could 

 be infected artificially by bringing branches of 

 barberry with fungus on them close to the wheat 

 plants. But his experiments were performed in 

 what a botanist would call rather a haphazard 

 fashion, and therefore they left him in some un- 

 certainty as to whether damp had not at least as 

 much to do with the disease as the fungus on 

 barberry. 



A few years later a Danish schoolmaster, called 

 Schoeler, carried out some further experiments 

 which made the connection between the barberry 

 fungus and the blight in wheat more certain. At 

 the same time, however, it was not clear exactly 

 what was the exact relation between the two ; quite 

 a number of people therefore persisted in saying that 

 the idea that barberry bushes in the hedges were 

 bad for wheat-fields was merely an idle tale. 



As in so many other cases it was not possible 

 to solve the problem completely until some other 

 questions, apparently not nearly related, had also 

 been solved. It was not sufficient to study rust in 



