174 DISEASES OF FIELD & GARDEN CROPS. [CH. 



vince Law of Massachusetts of 1738-61, in which it is said 

 that the " blasting of wheat and other English grain is 

 often occasioned by barberry bushes." In the intro- 

 ductory remarks written by Mr. Plowright to this Pro- 

 vince Law, he correctly says of corn mildew that germs 

 of the disease "will have a greater chance of gaining 

 admission into the interior of the wheat plants in those 

 parts of the field where the influence of currents of air is 

 least felt." The Massachusetts law enacted that all bar- 

 berry bushes should be extirpated, as they have now 

 virtually been extirpated in Britain. As far as is known, 

 this " extirpation " of barberries, even when enforced by 

 law, has not had the least tendency to lessen attacks of 

 corn mildew. Surely the quotation of an obsolete and, 

 as considered by many persons, a stupid old law, will not 

 convince disbelievers in the connection of corn mildew 

 and barberry blight that they are wrong. We might 

 quote other old laws, such as the one regarding witchcraft, 

 and refer to Matthew Hopkins, the professional and official 

 witch-finder, who in the years 1644, 1645, and 1646, as 

 recorded in Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers, pp. 434, 

 435, caused sixteen innocent persons to be hanged at 

 Yarmouth in Norfolk, fifteen at Chelmsford, and sixty at 

 various places in the county of Suffolk. 



In approaching modern times we come to much more 

 exact and searching evidence, and this modern work is 

 really the only part of the subject worthy of serious 

 attention. We have been informed by Mr. J. L. Jensen, 

 of Copenhagen, through Mr. C. B. Plowright, that the first 

 person who instituted scientific experiments with the 

 fungus of corn and the fungus of barberry blight was a 

 Danish schoolmaster named Schoeler, who lived at Ham- 

 mel, in Denmark, and who, seventy years ago, placed the 

 fungus of barberry blight on rye, and produced the rust 

 fungus. Bonninghausen in 1819 experimented with the 

 spores of the fungus of barberry blight by applying them 

 to rye. In five or six days the rust fungus is said to 



