RED RUST AND BROWN RUST. 169 



were of service, for they had rooted up the earth round seve- 

 ral potted peach trees, in order to devour the chrysalis of the 

 peach-tree borer." 



SECTION IX. RED RUST AND BROWN RUST. 

 From the Columbia (S. C.) Planter. 



DEAR SIR : I feel ashamed of not having yet complied 

 with your request, that I should send you a treatise on the 

 manufacture, application and effect of manure. I will, how- 

 ever, compromise with my conscience, by promising to do so 

 in a week or two. The fact is, I am so conscious of devoting 

 less attention and labor to that department of plantation 

 economy, than its importance demands, that I feel a repug- 

 nance to seeing my deficiency formally and mathematically 

 computed. My present impulse is to discourse on the inex- 

 plicable subject of rust in cotton, and I will not thwart it. 



In this section of country, we have two species of rust the 

 red or common rust, and the brown or French. I cannot 

 give you the derivation of the latter term, but it is of general 

 prevalence in this neighborhood. The red rust is that to 

 which all varieties of land in this district are more or less liable ; 

 and the brown rust, or French, that which is only found on 

 black-jack soils, and on the flat lands of the description of those 

 on Dutchman's and Wateree creeks. 



As Humbug jr. affirms, many theories have been adduced 

 to account for the origin of the red rust, the partizans of each 

 believing firmly in his own favorite, and denouncing those of 

 others ; and he accordingly treats as an absurdity, a creed of 

 mine, which I consider I have iucontestibly proven by an ex- 

 perience of nine years. 



