xxv.] CORN MILDEW AND BARBERRY BLIGHT. 173 



was an "old hedge with several barberry and other 

 bushes and some elm trees." The account continues : 

 "It is true the current of air was somewhat impeded 

 by the trees." In Mr. Carruthers' paper this important 

 sentence is not given, although, in our opinion, the old 

 hedge, with its variety of bushes and elm trees impeding 

 the air, is quite sufficient to greatly favour a growth of 

 mildew, and by no means favours the idea that the fungus 

 of barberry blight and corn mildew are genetically con- 

 nected. 



We acknowledge that an opinion expressed by Sir 

 Joseph Banks or Professor J. S. Henslow still carries 

 more weight than the belief of rustics in the last century ; 

 but it must be remembered that in the time of Sir Joseph 

 Banks and Professor Henslow very little indeed was known 

 of the anatomy or physiology of fungi, so little, indeed, 

 that any opinion the two gentlemen above Darned may 

 have expressed on this subject can only be held in slight 

 esteem now. Men of science of the present day do not 

 generally try to support their views by quoting what other 

 observers thought one or two hundred years ago, particu- 

 larly when those observers were not specialists. Old 

 observers were doubtless right in many of their ideas, 

 but no support is given to modern views by quoting the 

 opinions of old authors who were but poorly acquainted 

 with their subject. This course is never taken with geo- 

 logy or zoology then why with the most difficult and 

 least understood section of botany ? 



We consider, then, that this part of the subject has 

 been weakened by the attempts of some modern writers 

 to support their opinions by. quoting the views of rustics 

 in the last century, and by printing the old ideas of Sir 

 Joseph Banks and Professor J. S. Henslow about fungi 

 with which they were confessedly but very imperfectly 

 acquainted. This part of the subject is indeed, in our 

 opinion, hardly worth consideration. Mr. C. B. Plow- 

 right, however, has gone further, and republished a Pro- 



