104 



CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



intensely black colour, they are club-shaped at the head, 

 as at b in fig. 8, divided into two chambers as shown, each 

 of which contains a number of sporules. These club- 

 shaped heads spring from tapered stalks. The patches on 

 the straw or leaves, as in fig. 7, are composed of an immense 

 number of these spores in such profusion, indeed, that they 

 sometimes burst through the epidermis of the stem and 

 leaves, "that the whole plant appears as if it had been 

 scorched." In fig. 8 a a represents part of the straw. 

 The Eev. Mr. Sidney, in an able paper in the Eoyal 

 Agricultural Society's Journal, on the " Parasitic Fungi of 

 the British Farm " (to which we are indebted for the basis 

 of our illustrations), draws attention to the importance of 

 not confounding the true mildew, which we have described 

 and illustrated above, with " another black fungus which 

 gives a dingy aspect to whole fields towards harvest, and is 

 often called mildew; but which never attacks a plant till 

 it is previously diseased, and which, for want of any other 

 name, I am obliged to announce by its botanical name, 

 cladiosphorum herbarum" In fig. 9 we give an illustra- 

 tion of its appearance in the straw, and in fig. 1 an illus- 

 tration of the sporules ; from which the difference between 

 this and the real mildew will be at once seen. 



10. Smut. Like all the parasitic fungi attacking wheat, 



Fig. 9. 



Fig. 10. 



