158 



Blight. 



Vol. V. 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Blight. 



Sir, — Permit me to occupy a portion of 

 your columns with a few remarks in answer 

 to Tycho Brahe's animadversions on my com- 

 munication on the " Hessian fly," in the Au- 

 gust number of the Cabinet. 



And, in the first place, he cannot but un- 

 derstand me as saying, that all who depend 

 upon either a late, an early, or a middling 

 seed-time alone, as a security against the fly 

 in their wheat crops, will be disappointed, if 

 tiie season be unfavourable ; neither of these 

 periods having any thing whatever to do with 

 a disease to be produced by an unfriendly at- 

 mosphere, falling out after that operation is 

 performed. He is mistaken, if he under- 

 stands that the course which I recommend is 

 new to the grain-growing districts of Europe 

 — this is by no means the case — there, it is 

 not the custom to complain of the fly, as it is 

 here, and they believe they are right in attri- 

 buting their security to the system of sowing 

 wheat on a clean, unexhausted soil, but with- 

 out the stimulating aid of an immediate dress- 

 ing of manure on a light soil, which does 

 much more for the growth of straw than for 

 grain ; but then, they do not first sow oats, as 

 a preparatory seed-bed for wheat ! No doubt 

 it is easy to sow wheat between the first and 

 fourth frosts, but the greatest number of ag- 

 riculturists prefer to sow before any: the 

 nicety is, to hit the time between the first 

 and second, you see ; and to depend upon this 

 interval for a general seed-season, a man had 

 need be a conjuror, or he will sometimes cut 

 a sorry figure. 



But all this is of minor importance, com- 

 pared with the theory which Tycho attempts 

 to ridicule, by asking if I do not consider 

 botts in horses and worms in children, ex- 

 ceptions to the principle, that the fly is the 

 effect and not the cause of diseased wheat] 

 I answer no — and here we are at issue — I be- 

 lieve that botts in horses and worms in chil- 

 dren are t!ie effects of disease in the stomach, 

 else I see not why all should not be affected 

 by them; for we know, for instance, that 

 horses, when in the field, are continually con- 

 veying the eggs of the bolt-fly into the sto- 

 mach, by means of the tongue, yet few, com- 

 paratively, are afliicted with the disease ; and 

 it is with this view that salt has been recom- 

 mended as a preventive of this disorder, 

 that putricity might not be engendered in the 

 stomach of the horse, taking for granted that 

 without this, the eggs cannot come to matu- 

 rity : so that the difference between us is 

 just this, and no more. To me the case lies 

 in the space of a nut-shell, and he is about 

 right when he says, "on that principle, we 

 might explain all manner of diseases incident 



both to the animal and vegetable kingdoms," 

 absurd, as he conceives, that such a doctrine 

 will appear to most. 



But he is not right in what he says about 

 dunging clover in the spring — there he talks 

 without book, for I am sure he never practised 

 it, or he would know better. I have now by 

 me a stalk of dunged clover, 4 feet 3 inches 

 high, which has stood erect, with its lower 

 leaves and blossoms quite perfect — not having 

 rotted before coming into bloom ; and when 

 he manures his young clover in the spring, he 

 will no longer complain that the second cut 

 of clover-hay is worthless as food for animals 

 — but never mind, in Europe, where this sys- 

 tem is pursued, they neither complain of rot- 

 ten crops of clover or of the depredations of 

 the fly in wheat. 



I must observe, in my neighbourhood the 

 wheat-crop is seeded, ninety-nine times out 

 of a hundred, with grass; but I do not agree 

 with your correspondent whe§ he says, " to 

 burn the stubble would bft useless, because 

 the fly have emerged from their habitations 

 and have taken wing long before harvest ;" 

 and I would ask him if he has ever witnessed 

 those flights of countless millions ? as there 

 must be at that time. I confess that I have 

 never seen them, and never knew one who 

 has. I know that, before harvest, I secured 

 many of the roots of wheat containing large 

 numbers of their eggs, as they are called, 

 with a view of hatching them, but I could 

 not succeed — there they still remain, in statu 

 quo. 



Does your correspondent doubt the truth 

 of what I say, when I remark, that to sow 

 two grain-crops in succession would, in some 

 places in England, subject a tenant to prose- 

 cution 1 I tell him, that if he were there he 

 would never have the chance of sowing three 

 crops in succession, as he boasts of doing 

 here ; he would soon be deprived of the op- 

 portunity of ever sowing or reaping again ; 

 no wonder that he complains of the ravages 

 of the fly ! It would indeed be a neio course 

 with him, to retard the autumnal growth of 

 the wheat, so as to strengthen and enable it 

 the better to withstand the vicissitudes of the 

 winter and spring ; but if he is determined to 

 suppose that, by any thing I have said, I 

 could possibly mean to recommend to keep 

 the plant small and — what he chooses to add 

 — loeak, I should despair of doing any ser- 

 vice to the cause which I advocate, by what- 

 ever I might add to what I have already said. 

 If he have any Scotch neighbours, they will 

 set him right on the wonder which he ex- 

 presses, whether this principle would not ap- 

 ply to the animal as well as the vegetable ; 

 they would think a man deserving of prose- 

 cution, who would do all in his power to nurse 

 on to a premature growth their young cattle 



