166 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



has failed to show any reference to it. As, however, some 

 of the reports are not fully indexed, it may be that some such 

 references have escaped our notice. Looking at New Eng- 

 land alone, we find the references very scanty, and confined 

 to the last ten years. It is rumored that the disease has been 

 known for a good many years in some localities, as Danvers, 

 but of the truth of these reports we have no assurance, 

 inasmuch as all notices of the onion crop in the agricultural 

 journals, until within the last few years, have not only been 

 silent with regard to any disease, if we except the onion 

 maggot, but have uniformly represented the crop as large 

 and healthy. In fact, of the numerous references to the 

 onion crop, contained in the "New England Farmer," from 

 1830 to 1845, one is astonished to find nothing but repeated 

 assurances of enormous crops, with statements of the excellent 

 results of sowing onions on the same spot year after year, and 

 rare allusions to the trouble caused by the maggot. There 

 is not a hint of trouble from the smut, and in only one 

 instance is there any reference whatever to any disease 

 caused by a fungus. In the "New England Farmer" * is the 

 following paragraph : — 



" This (onion) crop, which is very extensively cultivated in 

 Danvers, has, during the rains and fogs of the month, been struck 

 with a mildew which has entirely checked the growth. We noticed 

 last week that a large part of the crop was already pulled. The 

 size of the onions is apparently from half to two-thirds what they 

 would have attained without this check." 



This paragraph points with considerable probability to an 

 attack of JPeronospora Schleideniana, or some allied fungus, 

 but certainly could not have been anything like the onion- 

 smut. More recently, we find a writer in the " American 

 Agriculturist" of March, 1861, asserting that the onion crop 

 of that year at Danvers was large, and that good crops had 

 been raised on the same spot for twenty consecutive years. 



Within the last ten or a dozen years, however, the onion 

 crop has not been as large as formerly, and within this period 

 we have definite accounts of injury done by the smut. 

 Exactly when and how the smut made its appearance, is 



* August 31, 1842, Vol. XXI., No. 9, p. 70. 



