PREVENTION OF RUST AND SMUT. 75 



a great feeder, the land would soon be exhausted. Another reason 

 is, and it is true of a great many other crops, that when one of the 

 same kind is continuously sown there is far more danger of injury by 

 insects or blight, as it seems to be a law of nature that special 

 plants are subject to the ravages of special insects or diseases, and 

 the best way to get relief from their attacks is to change the crop as 

 radically as possible from one kind to another; thus I would follow 

 after a wheat crop with grass, or if that is not used, I would succeed 

 it with beans, peas or some such cultivated crop . 



Q. Have you had any trouble with diseases such as rust or smut, 

 or from insects on wheat? 



A. No; but where such trouble is apprehended, the best preventive 

 I know is to soak the seed in strong brine for ten to twelve hours, 

 after which air-slaked lime should be mixed through it in quantity 

 sufficient to dry the seed. The midge occasionally attacks wheat 

 when sown in the fall, but not much in our section. I have under- 

 stood that in western New York its ravages have been so great that 

 farmers have been compelled to give up growing wheat, and after two 

 years, duiing which the growth of wheat was suspended, the 

 midge has disappeared for twenty years afterwards. This proves, as 

 you previously remarked, the benefit of rotation. In regard to rust 

 and smut, these are not troublesome in this vicinity, and I attribute 

 this exemption to proximity to the sea; for that reason I would advise 

 in sections inland, where there is no saline atmosphere, if danger of 

 rust is apprehended, to use from two to three hundred pounds of 

 salt per acre, at time of the sowing. 



(Mr. H.) I believe a very common and effective remedy is to steep 

 the seed in a solution of four ounces of sulphate of copper in a gallon 

 of water, this being enough for four bushels of seed. 



Q. Although the army worm is not a special wheat insect, yet 

 as that crop has suffered greatly from its ravages on Long 

 Island, what has been your most effectual remedy in preventing its 

 attacks ? 



A. I have found a. sure and certain protection against it by 

 plowing ditches eighteen inches wide, by about ten deep, around my 

 wheat fields, and strewing lime in them to prevent the insect from 

 crossing. To attain the same end, straw saturated with kerosene 

 may be thrown in the ditches and ignited, but I do not consider that 

 as good as lime, because after the straw is burned there is nothing 

 then to prevent the worm crawling up on the other side of the ditch, 

 while the lime, if carefully spread on so as to make an unbroken line, 

 really is a true dead line against their further approach. The Western 

 method in similar cases is to plow such a ditch, and as the insects 



