174 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



power, very much resemble those of the onion-smut), retain 

 their germinating power for only four years. We must con- 

 fess that we are skeptical as to the accuracy of statements 

 made about the smut twenty years ago, because, as we 

 remarked in the beginning, we have not been able to find in 

 the journals any record even of the existence of the disease 

 at that date, and it is hardly to be supposed that, if the dis- 

 ease was not prevalent and general enough to cause some 

 passing notice in the journals, that any systematic observa- 

 tions about its effects on the soil would have been made at 

 that remote period. In short, we may say that the smut will 

 cause comparatively little harm if onions be not replanted on 

 any spot until after an interval of four years, and if the pre- 

 cautions which we have advised, against the spread of the 

 disease, be adopted. It is fortunate that the diseased plants 

 are generally so small that the greater part of the spores fall 

 upon the ground, and are not carried. any distance by the 

 wind, it being probable that the disease is carried from one 

 field to another by means of passing animals and farm- 

 ing implements, quite as frequently as by the wind. In fact, 

 it does not spread with great rapidity, and, although we may 

 expect that eventually it will be found all over the country, 

 yet by proper care such need not be the case. 



The disease is at present limited to Massachusetts and Con- 

 necticut,* but no very serious trouble is experienced except 

 in towns like Wethersfield and Westport, where the onion is 

 almost the exclusive crop. In such towns, it is almost hopeless 

 to expect much relief, because the formers over any extensive 

 tract of land are unwilling to give up their favorite crop for 

 so long a time as four years. Some good, however, may 

 arise from the precautions we have enumerated. In places 

 where the disease has just appeared, it is as much the duty of 

 the town officers to compel persons, on whose farms the smut 

 has appeared, to burn the land and afterwards avoid planting 

 onions for at least four years, as it is to remove patients with 

 the small-pox, or to compel children, in families where there 

 is scarlet fever or diphtheria, to keep away from school. 



* We arc not sure whether the specimens sent by Mr. C. C. Frost of Brattle- 

 horoush were collected in Vermont. 



