78 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



the brief time which you will be able to place at my disposal, I shall 

 only have time to outline some of those which come under the first 

 head. It is only recently that these two branches of science which 

 refer to the very tiny subjects, such as can only be studied through 

 the microscope, have been pursued far enough by scientists to make 

 their investigations of real use to practical men, but now we are 

 finding that the professor and the farmer are nearer friends than 

 they were in days gone by. " Book larnin " was for many years 

 despised by the latter, but now the prejudices are wearing away, 

 owing largely to the exertions of our professors who visit the 

 Farmers' Institutes throughout the country. A neighbor used to 

 tell me that he could not see any use in " eddication "; he never 

 had any "larnin hisself " and he said that he knew more than those 

 who had. His favorite subject of conversation was astronom.y, and 

 he used to delight in meeting with us young students from the 

 university and proving to us that all we learned at school con- 

 cerning the rotundity of the earth and the distance away of the sun, 

 moon and stars was erroneous and absurd. He could prove to a 

 demonstration that the earth was fiat and that the sun was no larger 

 than a cart wheel and went round the " airth on'st a day." He had 

 himself ascertained the exact distance of the sun from the earth by 

 taking the angle, using for his mathematical instruments some 

 chalk, a square, and ten foot boards, and proved to a demonstration 

 that it was just five hundred miles. 



Such men remind one of the redoubtable preacher spoken of 

 by Dean Alford in his Queen's English, who used to hold forth at 

 Cambridge, in a chapel on Green street. The Dean says his wont 

 was to rail at the students of the University, trying to make out that 

 it was a waste of time to study Greek and Latin. On one occasion, 

 having wound himself up to the requisite pitch of fervor, he ex- 

 claimed in a voice of thunder, " Do ye think Fowl knew Greek ? " 



One of the problems that was long unsolved among us fruit 

 growers, was the cause of the Plum Knot, but lately mycologists 

 have given us an insight into its life history. For a long time it was 

 thought to be caused by some insect, and even yet we meet with 

 men who will not give up this theory. Insects are found in it, they 

 say, and this they claim is positive proof that they are the cause. 

 Careful investigation, however, shows that these insects are not the 

 cause of it, but that they simply make use of it as a favorable place 



