22 WHEAT CULTURE. 



such as soluble silica, potash, and some others, which are 

 required to make stiff, bright, well glazed straw ; and 

 this condition is aggravated, or rather operated upon, by 

 climatic changes, to produce fungi or rust. When the 

 straw is too tender and soft, lacking sufficient flinty or 

 glazed covering, which is the case when it grows too suc- 

 culent with excess of nitrogenous and lack of mineral 

 matters, it is liable to be ruptured if suddenly struck by 

 the sun while damp. When this state of things occurs, 

 an immediate sprinkling of plaster or of lime has been 

 sometimes known to arrest the disease and prevent serious 

 diaster to the grain ; but when it occurs late enough to 

 find the grain advanced to the milk or dough state, im- 

 mediately cutting the grain will save it from injury by 

 the rust, and secure a crop of sound wheat with some- 

 what injured straw only." 



EXPERIMENTS IN INDIANA. 



He also quotes an early writer, in the agricultural 

 reports from Indiana, who gives the following facts in his 

 own experience : 



" He sowed three equal fields of similar quality of soil, 

 and same kind of seed, to wheat, in September. On the 

 twenty-fifth of June following, rust appeared in all three 

 fields ; the wheat was just in the dough state. On that 

 day he cut one of the fields ; the second day he cut an- 

 other field, leaving them lying to cure in the swath, as 

 the grain was quite green, in the dough state. Four days 

 later he cut the third field, which, by this time, was 

 badly rusted. Upon thrashing and weighing the grain, 

 separately, of each field, he found that No. 1 (the first 

 cut) gave twelve bushels the acre of grain, weighing 

 fifty-six pounds the measured bushel ; No. 2 gave eight 

 bushels the acre, weighing forty-six pounds ; and No. 3 

 gave less than the seed sown, of poor grain." 



" In 1858, ten years later, rust made its appearance 



