204 
assumed to be infected by sclerotia each year. Another favoring con¬ 
dition was an unusually rainy season, April, May, and June being very 
wet. 
The same month (July) I carefully examined a number of large rye- 
fields in the central part of the State, where the spring was also wet, 
but where rye is not commonly cultivated, nor ever twice in succession 
on the same field, the result being that I could not find a single sclero- 
tium. 
It would be interesting to know whether ergot was abundant in other 
parts of the country, particularly along the Atlantic coast, where the 
rainfall was very heavy, 1889 being one of the wettest seasons on record. 
AN EXPERIMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF BLACK-ROT OF THE 
GRAPE. 
By B. T. Galloway. 
Despite the fact that black-rot has ravaged the vineyards of this 
country for more than a quarter of a century, no systematic attempt, 
aside from bagging the fruit, was made to combat it until within the 
past three years. It is true that numerous u remedies” were proposed 
for the disease, but in no case had any of them stood the test of a 
thorough trial. 
Bagging the fruit as a means of preventing rot first began to be ex. 
tensively practiced something like ten or a dozen years ago, and there 
is no doubt that when properly done it is still the safest and most trust¬ 
worthy means of saving the fruit. The only drawback to bagging is 
the cost, which must necessarily be considerable, as each bunch, in 
order to be made secure, is first bagged, then the bag is fastened, and 
finally, when the fruit is gathered, the bags must be removed. All 
of this of course consumes time, and time is money in this case as well 
as in any other. Where a man has a few choice varieties that he 
wishes to preserve for table use it would probably pay him to bag the 
fruit; but if he is a large grower, using his crop for wine, the impracti¬ 
cability of such a plan will at once become apparent. 
At the time bagging first began to be practiced, grape-growers, as a 
rule, recognized the fact that black-rot was a fungous disease, due to 
outside inllueuces, and not brought about by any morbid conditions of 
the plant. At first it was the practice to put on the bags as soon as 
the first rot specks appeared; but experience soon demonstrated that 
to preserve the fruit it was necessary to inclose the clusters shortly 
after the Powers opened. 
In order to settle definitely the cause of rot and if possible to provide 
a remedy, this Department began an investigation of the subject in 
188G. It is not necessary here to go into the details of this work, it 
being sufficient for our purpose to say that it was proved beyond ques¬ 
tion that the malady was caused by a parasitic fungus growing within 
