170 DISEASES OF FIELD & GARDEN CROPS. [en. 



mildew and the blight of barberry bushes is a popular 

 belief, said to have been common amongst rustics in old 

 times, that barberry bushes blighted corn. Now, although 

 popular beliefs peculiar to rustics of the last century need 

 not be altogether disregarded, yet we are inclined to put 

 a low estimate upon them. The rustics of the last century 

 did not always fix on the barberry bush as a supposed cause 

 of corn mildew, for in some districts old hawthorn bushes 

 were believed to be the cause; and to this day the labourers 

 of some parts of the eastern counties, as in the Hardingham 

 district, believe hawthorn bushes to be the cause, or, if not 

 the sole cause, to be at least equally pernicious to corn with 

 the barberry bush itself. The barberry is not everywhere 

 considered by rustics to be capable of causing corn mildew. 

 In some districts the barberry is said to be the cause of 

 Bunt, a disease of corn described further on in this work. 

 This belief was at one time very prevalent on the Conti- 

 nent, and is described by Phillipar in his TraitS Organo- 

 graphique et Pliysiologico-Agricole sur la carie, le Charbon, 

 VErgot, la Rouille, et autres Maladies du wdme genre qui 

 ravagent les Cdre'ales : Versailles, 1837. The division of 

 opinion amongst rustics appears to us to militate against 

 the acceptance of one particular view and the rejection of 

 the others. Eustics of the last century were very super- 

 stitious, and the farm labourer whose family was destroyed 

 by ergot in the last century (referred to in this work 

 under " Ergot ") would not believe that bad wheat was the 

 cause of the limbs of his family rotting off, but insisted 

 on the cause being witchcraft. No one at the present day 

 would consider the exploded idea of witchcraft supported 

 by this old belief of rustics, and we are inclined to give 

 no better credence to the ideas of rustics as to the connec- 

 tion of corn mildew and bunt with barberry and thorn 

 bushes. The farm labourers possibly noticed that the 

 colour of the fungus of rust of corn and that of the fungus 

 of barberry blight was the same, and this may have led 

 them to connect the two. When the barberry is in flower 



