A NOTE ON INDIAN WHEAT^I^USTS. 
tot 
The samples of wheat sown at Shibpur included examples of all 
the races ** or “ strains of wheat usually cultivated in the province. 
These races are not particularly numerous, four or five being prob- 
ably the limit so far as Bengal is concerned. The majority of the 
samples, however, belonged to four “races" ; (i) a wheat with broad 
leaves and soft, starchy, white grain ; (3) one with broad leaves 
and hard, glutinous, grey grain ; (3) one with narrow leaves and 
soft, starchy, pale-red grain ; (4) one with narrow leaves and 
hard, glutinous, darkish-red grain. The samples were not sown in 
any particular order as regards place of origin or as regards race. 
But while every patch became more a less rusted, the blight was 
observed to affect more seriously the soft starchy wheats, whether 
white or red, than it did the hard glutinous ones. A rather curious 
exception to this rule was noted in the case of one patch, the wheat 
in which, though soft, starchy and white as to its grain, had narrow 
leaves like a red wheat. But there is apparently no real connectioii 
between breadth of leaf-blade and power of resisting “rust, " for all 
save one of the “ Soft-red wheats had narrow blades, and almost all 
were badly rusted as compared with the “ hard-red ** wheats. The 
exceptions were in every case samples that ripened early, and it was 
apparently its agreement with those samples in this respect, and not 
its similarity as regards narrowness of leaf that helped to protect 
the ** white " sample already mentioned. So far as our observations 
at Shibpur go, they show that th ^re is not, at all events in Bengal, 
any race of wheat that is immune against this particular “ rust." 
The samples of wheat sown were of the usual Indian character--* 
carelessly collected and much mixed with seeds of pulses and of 
other cereals. As a consequence when the crop appeared, numerous 
plants of barley were to be found scattered throughout the field. 
Our attention was at once attracted to the fact that this “ rust ap- 
parently does not affect barley. As the point is one of some im- 
portance from its bearing on the assumed identity of this Indian 
“rust" with the Pucctnta rubigo~vera of Europe, a close and syste- 
matic drill to drill inspection of the whole field was instituted in 
connection with the search for teleutospores. In no single instance 
was a barley-plant at Shibpur, at any period of the season, affected 
by this “ rust," 
In most instances the mode of attack was exactly as in the plot 
first affected. A whole line of wheat-plants that on a given morning 
appeared still exempt frpm“ rusf," showed after a two-days’ interval 
the “ crown of leaves at their bases wilted and rusted from end to 
end of the drill ; the ground between the plants of that drill, at times 
