REMEDIES FOR FUNGOID DISEASES OF WHEAT. 113 



direction of great care in those minute details preliminary 

 to the larger, and as we now consider them, the more im- 

 portant operations of the farm. It seems to be but stat- 

 ing a truism when we say that the labour of cultivation is 

 altogether lost if we use seed which cannot fructify ; and 

 in great measure lost if we use seed which must produce 

 bad crops. We would think little of the engineer who 

 would make a steam engine of the highest finish in detail 

 and calculated to give out the maximum of work, and then 

 attempted to work it by burning in its furnace half coal 

 or half shale, or shale altogether and yet, in some de- 

 gree, many farmers do the same in elaborately working land 

 to prepare it for producing large crops, and then putting in 

 seed which cannot possibly yield them. If then the care- 

 ful raising of good seed is objected to, it behoves the farmer 

 to see that such seed as he has at command is really free 

 from the fungi spores. This he can secure, if he likes, by 

 dressing, and this operation should never be omitted. It 

 would be doing the cause of agriculture good service if a 

 series of elaborate and carefully conducted experiments 

 were made having reference to the employment of various 

 dressings for wheat. Professor Henslow suggests the fol- 

 lowing as the "kind of experiments that may be called 

 for :" In the first place, it will be necessary to collect a 

 parcel of thoroughly bunted or smutted wheat seed, dividing 

 this into a number of small packets, each containing the same 

 weight or the same number of grains. In washing or steep- 

 ing the contents of any one of these packets, which should be 

 numbered as No. 1, No. 2, &c., the grains which float should 

 be kept apart, and the fungi which come to the top should 

 also be collected and placed in a packet and marked as F 1 

 (fungi from No. 1), F 2 (fungi from No. 2), &c. The fol- 

 lowing washes or dressings may be used. 



No. 1. Seeds unwashed to serve as a comparative experiment. 



No. 2. Washed in cold water only. 



No. 3. ,, ,, scalding watei'. 



No. 4. ,, ,, water with lime, the proportions to be specified. 



No. 5. ,, ,, in water and brine in the following proportions. 



