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Pressure by rolling, or folding, or boll), after sowing on 

 light land, does essential service; also, early sowing, and 

 eating down close by sheep, and giving them on it the 

 tops of mangel wurzel and Swede turnips. It may so 

 happen that the crop escapes smut without any preparation 

 of the seed to prevent it ; but in these days, scarcely 

 any one runs that risk, but makes use of some sort of 

 steep brine that will swim an egg, is a good and safe 

 one hot lime and water will do. Mildew, in my 

 opinion, is caused by the plant being too luxuriant ; 

 the root absorbing from the earth more nourishment 

 than can get through the straw to the ear ; the straw 

 therefore bursts, and the juice exudes, turns the straw 

 black, and renders it so callous that it is incapable of con- 

 veying a proper supply of nourishment to the ear ; thig 

 makes the grain thin and poor, and when much affected, it 

 should be cut, although unripe. For these few years past, 

 we have not been much troubled with it, but our good 

 .sandy loams, which produce luxuriant crops, more fre- 

 quently suffer from it than the strong clays, or weaker and 

 poorer soils, and I believe there is no preventive. It is said, 

 and I believe it is a fact, that a barberry bush, growing near 

 wheat, will cause mildew ; this is strange, and may perhaps 

 be thought not to accord with my ideas of the causes of 

 mildew. Where a dunghill has laid in a field, the wheat 

 growing very luxuriantly on that part, is often mildewed. 

 There is a red wheat, with a white chaff, grown in this 

 county, that will not, it is said, mildew. I have often 

 grown it, and have some now ; it has never mildewed with 

 me, but when I have grown it I do not think it has been 

 a mildewing year. Cutting wheat should begin before it is 

 quite ripe, otherwise those who have any quantity to reap 

 will let some of it remain so long uncut, as to lose, by its 

 shedding, much of the finest of the grain. It ripens dif- 

 ferently in different seasons ; sometimes it dies at the root 

 first ; when it does so, it should be cut, although the straw 

 should appear to be rather loo green. Wheat reaped early 

 in the morning, with a strong dew on it, should not be 

 bound up in sheaves till the moisture is dried out. In the 

 year 1832, there was found in the middle of a wheat field 



