46 British Uredinea and Ustilaginee. 
CHAPTER VII. 
HETERGCISM. 
flistory—The fact that a certain number of Uredines 
possess the faculty of passing a part of their lives upon 
one plant, and the remainder of it upon another and a 
totally different one, is so remarkable that until quite 
recently there were persons who declined point-blank to 
believe it. It is quite unnecessary now to undertake serzatim 
to answer the theoretical objections which have been 
raised against the fact that hetercecism does occur, for 
the simple reason that these objections are only theoretical. 
The process of simply placing the spores of the fungi in 
question upon their various host-plants is so easy, that 
any one wishing to appeal to Nature herself can do so 
with very little trouble. 
The first Uredine in which this peculiarity of develop- 
ment was observed was Puccinia graminis, the wheat 
mildew. The mildew of wheat has, as a blight, probably 
been known from remote antiquity. The Romans held a 
festival on April 25—the Robigalia, or Rubigalia—with 
the object of protecting their fields from mildew. The 
sacrifices offered on this occasion consisted of the entrails 
of a dog and a sheep, accompanied with frankincense and 
wine.* In Wickliffe’s Bible, the suggestion is made that 
* Smith, ‘Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” sth edit. 
(1863), p. 322. 
