828 T R I 
pores of thousands of acres of corn. Provi- 
dence, however, careful of the creatures it 
has created, has benevolently provided against 
the too extensive multiplication of any species 
of being ; was it otherwise, the minute plants 
and animals, enemies against which man has 
the fewest means of defence, would increase 
to an inordinate extent: this, however, can 
n no ^ase happen, unless many predisposing 
causes afford their combined assistance. But 
for this wise and beneficent provision, the 
plague of slugs, the plague of mice, the 
plagues of grubs, wire-worms, chafers, and 
many other creatures whose power of mul- 
tiplying is countless as the sands of the sea, 
would, long before this time, have driven 
mankind, and all the larger animals, from the 
lace of the earth. 
Though all old persons who have con- 
cerned themselves in agriculture, remember 
the blight in corn many years, yet some have 
supposed that of late years it has materially 
increased ; this, however, does not seem to 
be the case. 'l ull, in his Ilorsehoeing Ilus- 
bandrv, page 74, tells us, that the year 1725 
“ was a year of blight, the like of which was 
never before heard of, and which he hopes 
may never happen again yet the average 
price of wheat in the year 1726, when the 
harvest of 1725 was at market, was only 36v. 
Ad. and the average of the five years of which 
it makes the first, 37s. 7ch— 1797 was also a 
year of great blight; the price of wheat in 
1798 was 495. id. and the average ef the five 
years, from 1 795 to 1 799, 63 s. 5 d. 
The climate of the British isles is not the 
only one that is liable to the blight in corn. 
It happens occasionally Jin every part of Eu- 
rope, and probably in all countries where 
corn is grown. Italy is very subject to it, 
and the last harvest of Sicily has been mate- 
rially hurt by it. Specimens received from 
the colony of New South Wales, shew that 
considerable mischief was done to the wheat 
crop there in the year 1803, by a parasitic 
plant, very similar to the English one. 
It has been long admitted by farmers, 
though scarcely credited by botanists, that 
wheat in the neighbourhood of a barberry 
bush seldom escapes the blight. The village 
of Rollesbv in Norfolk, where barberries 
abound, and wheat seldom succeeds, is called 
by the opprobrious appellation of mildew 
Rollesbv. Some observing men have of late 
attributed this very perplexing effect to the 
farina of the flowers of the barberry, which is 
in truth yellow, and resembles in some de- 
gree the appearance of the rust, or what is 
presumed to be the blight in its early state. 
It is, however, notorious to all botanical 
observers, that the leaves of the barberry are 
very subject to the attack of a yellow para- 
sitic fungus, larger, but otherwise much re- 
sembling the rust in corn. 
Is it not more than possible that the parasitic 
fungus of the barberry and that of wheat, are 
one and the same species, and that the seed 
is transferred from the barberry to the corn ? 
Misletoe, the parasitic plant with which we 
are the best acquainted, delights most to grow 
on the apple and hawthorn, but it flourishes 
occasionally on trees widely differing in their 
nature ,from both of these. In the Home 
Park, at Windsor, misletoe may be seen in 
abundance on the lime trees planted there 
in avenues; If this conjecture is founded, 
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another year will not pass without its being 
confirmed by the observations of inquisitive 
and sagacious farmers. 
It would be presumptuous to offer any 
remedy for a malady, the progress of which 
is so little understood ; conjectures, however, 
founded on the origin here assigned to it. may 
be hazarded without offence. 
It is believed to begin early in the spring, 
and first to appear on the leaves of wheat in 
the form of rust, or orange-coloured powder ; 
at this season, the fungus will, in all pro- 
bability, require as many weeks for its pro- 
gress from infancy to puberty, as it does days 
during the heats of autumn ; but a very few 
plants of wheat, thus infected, are quite suffi- 
cient if the fungus is permitted to ripen its 
seed, to spread the malady over a field, or 
indeed over a whole parish. 
The chocolate-coloured blight is little ob- 
served till the corn is approaching very near- 
ly to ripeness ; it appears then in the field in 
spots, which increase very rapidly in s : ze, 
and are in calm weather somewhat circular, 
as if the disease took its origin from a central 
position. 
May it not happen, then, that the fungus 
is brought into the field in a few stalks of in- 
fected straw, uncorrupted, among the mass of 
dung laid in the ground at the time of sow - 
ing ? It must be confessed, however, that the 
clover lays, on which no dung from the yard 
was used, were as much infected last autumn 
as the manured crops. The immense multi- 
plication of the disease in the last season, 
seems, however, to account for this ; as the 
air was no doubt frequently charged with 
seed for miles together, and deposited it in- 
discriminately on all sorts of crops. 
It cannot, however, be an expensive pre- 
caution to search diligently in the spring for 
young plants of wheat infected with the dis- 
ease, and carefully to extirpate them, as well 
as all grasses, for several are subject to this or 
a similar malady, which have the appearance 
of orange-coloured or of black stripes on 
their leaves, or on their straw; and if experi- 
ence shall prove that uncorrupted straw can 
carry the disease with it into the field, it will 
cost the farmer but little precaution to pre- 
vent any mixture of fresh straw from being 
carried out with his rotten dung to the wheat 
field. 
In a year like the present, that offers so 
fair an opportunity, it will be useful to observe 
attentively whether cattle in the straw-yard 
thrive better or worse on blighted than on 
healthy straw. That blighted straw, retain- 
ing on it the fungi that have robbed the corn 
of its flour, has in it more nutritious matter 
than clean straw which has yielded a crop of 
plump grain, cannot be doubted ; the ques- 
tion is, whether this nutriment in the form of 
fungi does, or can be made to agree as well 
with the stomachs of the animals that consume 
it, as it would do in that of straw and corn. 
It cannot be improper in this place to re- 
mark, that although the seeds of wheat are 
rendered, by the exhausting power of the 
fungus, so lean and shrivelled, that scarcely 
any flower fit for the manufacture of bread 
can be obtained by grinding them, these very 
seeds will, except, perhaps, in the very worst 
cases, answer the purpose of seed-corn as 
well as the fairest and plumpest sample that 
can be obtained, and, in some respects, bet- 
ter ; for as a bushel of much blighted corn 
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will contain one-third, at least, more grains in 
number than a bushel of plump corn, three 
bushels of such corn will go* as far in sowing! 
land, as four bushels of large grain. 
1 he use of the flour of corn in furthering 
the process of vegetation, is to nourish the 
minute plant from the time of its developc- 
ment tiil its roots are able to attract food 
from the manured earth; for this purpose, 
one -tenth of the contents of a grain of good 
wheat is more than sufficient. The quantity 
of flour in wheat lias been increased by cul- 
ture and management, calculated to improve 
its qualities for the benefit of mankind, in the 
same proportion as the pulp of apples and 
pears has been increased, by the same means,' 
above what is. found on the wildings and 
crabs in the hedges. 
It is customary to set aside or to purchase 
for seed-corn, the boldest and plumpest sam- 
ples that can be obtained ; that is, those that 
contain the most flour; but this is an unneces- 
sary waste of human subsistence; the small- 
est grains, such as are sifted out before the 
wheat is carried to market, and either con- 
sumed in the farmer’s family, or given to his 
poultry, will be found by experience to answer 
the purpose of propagating the sort whence 
they sprung, as effectually as the largest. 
Every ear of wheat is composed of a num- 
ber of cups placed alternately on each side of 
the straw; the lower ones contain, according 
to circumstances, three or four grains, nearly 
equal in size, but towards the top of the ear, 
where the quantity of nutriment is diminished 
by the supply of those cups that are 
nearer the root, the third or fourth grain in a 
cup is frequently defrauded of its proportion, 
and becomes shrivelled and small. These 
small grains, which are rejected by the 
miller, because they do not contain flour 
enough for his purpose, have, nevertheless,; 
an ample abundance for ail purposes of vege- 
tation, and as fully partake of the sap, (or 
blood, as we should call it in animals,) of the 
kind which produced them, as the fairest and 
fullest grain that can be obtained from the 
bottoms of the lower cups by the wasteful 
process of beating the sheaves. 
TRITOMA, a genus of insects of the co- 
leoptera order. The generic character is,] 
antennae clavate, the club perfoliate; lip 
emarginate; anterior feelers hatchet- shaped ; 
shells as long as the body. There are tens 
species, 
'1R1TON, a genus of vermes mollusca.] 
The generic character is, body long ; mouth! 
with an involute spiral proboscis ; tentacular 
or arms, twelve, viz. six on each side, divided 
nearly to the base, the end ones cheliferousl 
There is only a single species, viz. the lit-l 
toreous, which is found in Italy, in various; 
cavities of submarine rocks, and "may be seen! 
in many species of the lepas, particularly in 
the anatafera. 
TRITURATION. See Pharmacy. 
TRIUMFE'FTA, a genus of the dodeean- 
dria monogynia class of plants, the corolla of 
which consists of rive linear, erect, obtusei 
petals, hollowed, and bent backwards ; the 
point is prominent below the apex ; the fruit 
is a globose capsule, every where surrounded 
with hooked prickles, and contains four cells ;j 
the seeds are two, convex on one side and: 
angular on the other ; but only one of the two. 
