AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 303 



blackened tlie ears and ruined the grain." The Romans wor- 

 shipped a god under the name of rust or smut " Rubiga,''^ and 

 held festivals to him about the end of April, to keep off the smut. 

 King Numa, one of their most venerable monarchs, by statute, in 

 the second year of his reign, established Rubigalia, rust or smut 

 feasts, to take place about the seventh day of May, annually. 

 The disease was always attributed to excess of humidity, Theo- 

 phrastus, 2300 years ago, calls it " Rubigo humescentia occupat 

 semina," a rendering of his Greek in his Botany. 



Solon Robinson — I wish to call the attention of the American 

 farmers, through their Club, and also to place upon record a very 

 important matter which in some future years, not very far distant, 

 may affect all the oil producing interests of America. I allude 

 to the discovery that we have stored up in the earth, a supply of 

 the same substance that we obtain by planting corn, tending, har- 

 vesting, storing, feeding to hogs, and manufacturing the fat thus 

 produced into oil. Now, how far this is going to affect those who 

 furnish this vast agricultural product, may be thought of at least 

 after reading the account given of the Breckinridge coal by the 

 commercial editor of the Tribune : 



Since the first developments which were made by experimental 

 analysis showing that the coal of the Breckinridge company con- 

 tains a large amount of. oil suitable for illuminating and lubri- 

 cating purposes, we have watched with great interest tlie progress 

 of these experiments as of truly national importance, as giving a 

 new impulse to the development of the mineral resources of the 

 country, and as establishing the fact that we have within our- 

 selves an inexhaustible supply of light, to be obtained with far 

 less the expense, and labor, and danger, than the animal oil now 

 in use. The whale, upon which we now depend for oil, is rapidly 

 being driven by the energy of our fishermen into inaccessible seas, 

 and will before many years, at the present rate of destruction, 

 entirely disappear. By the discovery of the presence of a true 

 illuminating and lubricating fluid residing in certain descriptions 

 of coal, we have become independent of such a misfortune, and 

 the whole whaling fleet might be laid up to rot, and we should 

 still have light. 



