SMUTS AND BUNT. 
37 
remembrance of it for the time is gone, his only thought is to 
stack his corn in good condition. But the millions of spores 
are dispersed, ten millions at least for every ear that has 
been “ smutted,” — and will they not many of them reappear 
next year, and thus year after year, with as much certainty as 
the grain upon which they are parasitic ? 
Like many of the parasitic fungi, so destructive in the farm 
and the garden, this species belongs to the family in which 
the spores are the distinctive feature. After many botanical 
changes, the “ smut ” is at length regarded as a fixed resident 
in the genus Ustilago with the specific name of segetum , which 
latter signifies “ standing corn it is therefore the Ustilago, 
or smut of the standing corn . The characters of the genus 
are chiefly that the spores are simple and deeply seated, 
springing from delicate threads, or in closely packed cells, 
ultimately breaking up into a powdery mass. Fifteen mem- 
bers of this genus have been described as British. One of 
these (U. maydis) attacks the maize or Indian corn grown in 
this country in a similar manner as the common smut 
attacks wheat or barley ; but as maize is not an established 
crop with us, a more minute description of this species is un- 
necessary; the spores are figured in plate III. fig. 29. Another 
species (U. hyjpodytes) makes its appearance at first beneath 
the sheaths of the leaves surrounding the stems of grasses, 
and ultimately appears above and around them as a purplish- 
black dust. The seeds of sedges, the leaves and stems of 
certain definite species of grass, the flowers of scabious, the 
receptacles of the goatsbeard, the anthers of the bladder 
campion, and other allied plants, and the seeds of the Bistort 
family, are all liable, more or less, to the attacks of one or 
other of the residue of the fifteen species of Ustilago already 
referred to as indigenous to Britain. 
Although we do not profess to teach practical men how to 
grow good corn, or how they shall get rid of, or keep clear 
from, the many foes to which their crops are exposed, yet a 
suggestion may be offered, based upon the facts obtained in 
our botanical researches, supported by the analogy of allied 
circumstances. In this instance the extreme minuteness and 
profusion of the spores would evidently render all the corn 
liable to the attachment of, perhaps only two or three, spores 
to the seed coat. Some ears of corn in nearer proximity to 
the smutted ears may be covered with spores which yet 
remain invisible to the naked eye, and when these grains are 
mixed with others in the heap, the chances are not much in 
favour of any handful not becoming charged with spores. If 
the majority of these were not redeemed from destruction by 
the many changes, shiftings, rubbings, and scrubbings to 
