AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 127 



air was sultry, the heat intense, and the showers frequent, 

 with intervals of sunshine, and the earth was steaming most 

 profusely. An intelligent farmer in my employ, accustomed 

 to the cultivation of this gniin in one of the best wheat dis- 

 tricts in New York, remarked to me that this was very se- 

 vere weather for my wheat, and that he feared I should lose 

 it. The rust in fact appeared for the first time the next day, 

 and rapidly extended itself over the whole field, presenting 

 no difference either ir the manured or in the parts of the field 

 not marured, and of course less luxuriant. Had my wheat 

 been sown earlier, so as to have been farther advanced, it 

 would probably have escaped the blight ; had it been sown 

 later, so as not to have been so far advanced as it was, per- 

 haps, I should have been as fortunate ; but the occurrence 

 of such a peculiar state of the atmosphere being wholly ac- 

 cidental, at least as far as we are concerned, it is impossible 

 to make any certain calculation about it.' 



In the succeeding number, Mr. Colman quotes Sir John 

 Sinclair's General Report of the Agriculture of Scotland, 

 Husbandry of Scotlan I, a difl^erent work, by the same au- 

 thor, and a Treatise on Rural Affairs, by John Brown, of 

 Markle, to show that wet and warm weather, when the ker- 

 nel was beginning to form, had usually been accompanied 

 with mildew in wheat, in Great Britain. In No. Ill, the 

 writer states in substance, that the crops of wheat, both 

 summer and winter, have been in this vicinity good and 

 abundant, and on an average full twenty bushels to the acre. 

 In the towu of Northfield, Massachusetts, ' where three years 

 since the article was scarcely cultivated, I have heard the 

 crops of this year (1833) rated as high as seven thousand 

 bushels. I think this must be an over-estimate ; but any 

 thing like an approach to this, or even an adequate supply 

 for the population of the town, M^hich is believed to be fully 

 secured, is certainly a considerable event in our agricultural 

 history.' 



The writer states that William Pomroy, of Northfield, 

 Massachusetts, from twenty-three acres of old meadow land, 

 on the banks of the Connecticut, harvested more than five 

 hundred bushels of winter and spring wheat, ' of as fine a 

 sample as ever floated on the Erie canal. A part of it was 

 reckonei to yield fully thirty bushels to the acre.' Most of 

 this wheat was sowed very early, and was too forward to be 

 injured by the sultry and foggy weather of July. One piece, 

 however, was blighted in consequence of late sowing. He 



