42 



with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword 

 and with blasting and with mildczv; and they shall pursue thee until thou 

 perish." 



From these verses Eriksson* concludes that these statements, which 

 are more than two thousand years old, refer to smut and rust in grain. 

 He cites the word Schiddafon (heat) for mildew or blight and Jerakon 

 (yellowness) for rust. The following sentences already quoted by Pammel- 

 point to mildew in grain : — "I ha\ e smitten you with blasting and 

 mildew: when your garden and your \ineyards and your fig trees and your 



olive trees increased, the palmer-worm devoured them "^ 



Descriptive of the extent of the failure in the harvest is the verse in 

 Haggai* : "Since these days were when one came to an heap of 

 twenty measures, there were but ten : — when one came to the pressf at for 

 to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty. I smote 

 you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labors of your 

 hands . . . ." 



Among the Greeks, Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) mentions the years of 

 rust and Theophrastus of Eresus (371-286 B. C.) recognized the varying 

 susceptibility of the different varieties of grain to rust\ He reports 

 also a second kind of phenomena termed blight, i. e. the bark blight of trees, 

 since he says (Book 14, Chapter 14) that the cultivated tree? are subject to 

 several diseases. Among these, some are common to all trees while others 

 attack only certain tree species. One universal disease is the attack by 

 worms or by blight. 



Theophrastus, whose statements, according to Kirchner®, are certainly 

 based on his own observations, speaks especially of the blight and 

 canker of fig trees and mentions in this connection that diseases of trees (as 

 of animals) seem to be determined by climate, since in some regions these 

 same trees are healthy. The fig tree, jie says further, is attacked mostly by 

 blight and canker. Blight (Sphakclisfiios), however, is spoken of when the 

 roots become black, canker (Krndos) when the branches become so. The 

 zvild fig tree, on the contrary, has neither canker nor blight. 



The statement, that some fatalities are due to the intluence of atmos- 

 phere and habitat, indicates to us the cause of the disease. Such phenomena 

 can not really be termed disease, as, for example, freezing and what some 

 call blight. In some places certain winds also kill and burn the plants, as at 

 Chalcis in Euboea, where the northwest wind is cold, if it blows shortly be- 

 fore the solstice. It blasts the trees and dries them, almost more than the sun. 



1 Eriksson, Die Getreideroste. Stockholm 1894, p. 8. (Here detailed historical 

 reports on rust). 



2 Pammel, L. H., Weems, J. B. and Lamson-Scribner, The Grasses of Iowa. 

 Des Moines, Iowa, 1901. 



3 Amos, Chapter IV, 9. 



4 Haggai, Chapter II, 16-17. 



5 Naturgeschichte der Gewilchse. Translated and explained by Sprengel. Al- 

 tona 1822. I. 



6 Kirchner, Die botanischen Schriften des Theophrast von Eresos. Sond. 

 Jahrb. f. klassische Philologie. Leipzig, 1874. 



