9Q CULTIVATION OF PLANTS. 



per acre; but the average produce of the United States, will not, 

 probably, exceed twenty bushels per acre. The weight of the 

 straw is reckoned to be about double that of the grain. An 

 acre, therefore, yielding twenty-five bushels of grain, at the 

 rate of sixty pounds per bushel, would yield about three thou- 

 sand pounds of straw. 



The straw of wheat is applied to various purposes of rural 

 economy and the arts. Its intrinsic value must vary, however, 

 according to its feeding properties the quantity of manure 

 into which it may be converted, when used as a litter its 

 fitness to be employed as thatch, for which purpose, from its 

 long and rigid stems, it is generally well suitable or its use in 

 manufactures.* Its price depends upon its vicinity to large 

 towns, where it is wanted for litter. 



DISEASES OF WHEAT. 



Wheat is subject to various accidents and diseases., some of 

 them peculiar to itself. The most dreaded and destructive of 

 the diseases to which it is liable, is blight, so termed from its 

 effects upon the ear, or mildew from its supposed cause, namely, 

 mel-dew, from an old opinion that it was produced by honey- 

 dew falling from the air. 



In many of the wheat growing sections of the Union, these 

 diseases are denominated rust and smut; under the term rust, 

 blight and mildew are included. But these diseases, if they 

 are really distinct, are nevertheless so nearly allied, that for all 

 practical purposes they may be considered as one. 



It may be assumed as a principle, that the immediate cause 

 of every distemper which attacks the plants of wheat, may be 

 ascribed to the state of the season, combined with the circum- 

 stances of soil, situation and seed. It is indeed not necessary 

 to class them; but the great body of farmers consider them as 

 distinct disorders, arising solely from the influence of the at- 

 mosphere. 



Mildew they regard as a disease which affects the ear, though, 

 in general, it is apparently more injurious to the straw, and is 



* The Leghorn manufacture of wheat-straw into the well known Leghorn 

 or Tuscany hats, .has lately been inquired into, and detailed in several publi- 

 cations. The variety of wheat cultivated in Tuscany for this purpose is known 

 as the grano marzuolo, a variety of summer wheat with long bearded ears. It 

 is cultivated on the sandy hills on both sides of the Arno. The seed is sown 

 in March, very thick, and pulled when the ear is fully shot, but before the grain 

 is formed. It is then eighteen inches high, if the crop is good it is bleached 

 as we do flax, and afterwards tied up in bundles in the same manner, and car- 

 ried home, to have the part between the ear and the first fruit [joint?] in the 

 stalk selected, that being the only part used. British Gard. Mag., vol. v. p. 70. 



