i6o History of Animal Plagues. 



constant rains, accompanied by intense cold, and snow which 

 kept falling and thawing. The month of March, however, 

 contrary to custom, was without rain, and remaining so up 

 to the time of the equinox, with great serenity of the atmo- 

 sphere, raised our spirits; when, once more, the heavens seemed 

 to let loose upon us all the water contained in their bosom; so 

 that for the space of a night and a day everything was full of 

 water, and this State (Lombardy) presented the appearance of an 

 island. In the beginning of June signs of rust appeared, as in 

 the previous year. The mulberry first became affected. The 

 same blight, the worst disease that attacks crops, increasing little 

 bv little, soon laid hold of the corn and all kinds of pulse, but 

 especially beans ; and it did this not only on the low ground 

 where the water was stagnant, but also in the more elevated 

 places, and on the very hills themselves. It was a most grievous 

 and deplorable sight for the eyes to look around, and see the 

 fields not green, but black and covered with a kind of soot. For 

 as in the preceding year this disease had covered the corn with a 

 red colour, so in this year it sprinkled it with a carbonaceous 

 matter known as the great smut* [magna atredo). In the whole 



1 Mr Cooke says regarding this agricultural pest: — 'One of the fungal 

 diseases of corn long and widely known has obtained amongst agriculturists 

 different appellations in different localities. In some it is the "smut," in others 

 it is respectively "dust-brand," "burnt-ear," "black-ball," and "chimney- 

 sweeper," all referring, more or less, to the blackish soot-like dust w^ith which 

 the infected and abortive ears are covered. This fungus does not generally 

 excite so much concern amongst farmers as the other affections to which their corn 

 crops are liable. Perhaps it is really not so extensively injurious, although it en- 

 tirely destroys every ear of corn upon which it establishes itself Wheat, barley, 

 oats, rye, and many grasses are subject to its attacks, and farmers have been heard 

 to declare that they like to see a little of it, becafuse its presence proves the general 

 excellence of the whole crop. No one who has passed through a field of standing 

 corn, after its greenness has passed away, but before it is fully ripe, can have failed 

 to notice, here and there, a spare lean-looking ear, completely blackened with a 

 coating of minute dust. If he has been guilty of brushing in amongst the corn, it will 

 still be remembered how his hands and clothing became dusted with this powder ; 

 and if at the time he should have been clad in sombre black, evidence will have 

 been afforded — in the rusty-looking tint of the powder when sprinkled upon his 

 black continuations — that, however sooty this powder might appear whilst still 

 adhering to the ears of corn, it has an evident brown tint when in contact with 

 one's clothes. This powder, minute as it is, every granule of it constitutes a spore 

 or protospore capable of germination, and ultimately, after several intermediate 

 Stages, of reproducing a fungus like the parent of which it formed a part. During 



