* AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 413 



plant, or by the roots from the soil. Possibly different species may 

 enter by these different paths. We cannot prevent the entrance 

 of these spores ! We will give all that we have learned, and we 

 have baen carefully trying to know all about it. And we ask our 

 practical friends to be attentive to the subject. 



Attacks of rust are favored by — 1st. Damp and cold weather 

 succeeding warm weather, at the time when the straw is still soft 

 and juicy — hence late grain is very liable to rust. 2d. A defi- 

 ciencj'^ of the outer silicious coat or an unnaturally soft and watery 

 state of the plant. These unhealthy conditions may proceed from 

 poverty and want of alkalies in the soil, from the presence of too 

 much crude vegetable matter, as sod, or raw manure, or a wet and 

 undrained land. 3d. It is probable that when the grain of rusty 

 wheat is sown, or sound wheat in land where wheat rusted in pre- 

 vious years, the seeds of the fungus being in the soil. 



- The best Preventives. 

 1. Healthy seed, 2. Early sowing. 3. Draining. 



4. Abstain from sowing wheat in lea-lands (pasture?,) or bog. 



5. Make the soil rich, but not filled with crude vegetable mat- 

 ter. 



The Dust-Brand — A very minute fungus fixing itself on the 

 flower or young grain of wheat or oats, and turning the head into 

 a mass of black dusty spores, which blow away. Change of seed 

 is a remedy for this. 3d. Washing the seed is a useful prevent- 

 ive. 



Smut ov bunt — Parasitic fungus growing witliin llie grain, con- 

 verting its substance into a dark colored fetid mass of spores or 

 mould balls, which under the microscope look like rough berries, 

 and are filled Avith the minute dust-like seeds of the smut. Its 

 mode of propagation is pretty well understood and easily guarded 

 against. When smutty grain is threshed, the infected seeds are 

 broken, and the smut being of an adhesive nature, attaches itself 

 to the sound grains, and these when planted give a smutty crop. 

 Good wheat put into bags or»boxes, or that threshed on the floor 

 where smutty wheat was threshed, wall be smutty. Seed wheat, 

 however, sliould always be well washed before sowing. The ad- 

 hesive nature of the smut is converted into soap by alkali and so 

 washes off. Ley therefore should be used in washing tlie seed. 

 Lime is not so gocd, for by too much slaking it often loses its power, 

 pot-ash, ammonia. 



Much attention is now given here to the breeds of all the vari- 

 ous kinds of farm stock, from horses to bantams. The old world 



