DISEASES OF CORN 103 



duce attack the young corn plants, sending their mycelia 

 into the tissues. Smut may attack corn at any time during 

 the growing season, but it usually appears most abundantly 

 when the plants are growing rapidly and are consequently 

 tender. 



122. Treatment. There is no method of seed treat- 

 ment that will prevent smut, as the spores are not carried 

 to any great extent by the seed corn. Some of the practical 

 means at hand of checking this disease are to remove the 

 smutted parts of the corn plants from the field and burn them, 

 and to use care to prevent the smut spores from getting into 

 the manure. They usually get into the manure through 

 feeding smutted stalks to cattle. Rotation of crops will 

 have a tendency to decrease the prevalence of smut. Like- 

 wise, the application of manure to grass land a year or so 

 in advance of planting the field to corn will have a tendency 

 to reduce the infection from the manure. 



123. Feeding Smutted Corn. Many people have thought 

 that the " cornstalk disease," which sometimes attacks cattle 

 that are feeding in stalk fields, was caused by the eating of 

 smut. Experiments have shown that it is due to some other 

 cause, since quite large quantities of smut have been fed to 

 cattle, as much as several pounds a day to each animal, 

 without any detrimental results. These experiments indi- 

 cate that there is some food value in the smut masses and 

 that smutted stalks may be fed without danger. 



124. Bacterial Diseases. Corn is subject to several 

 bacterial diseases but the damage done by them is not 

 serious and they need not be discussed. 



INSECTS AFFECTING CORN 



125. Wireworms. Wireworms, which are the larvae of 

 the click beetle, sometimes do serious damage to corn for a 



