Vol. LXI. No. 2730. 
NEW YORK, MAY 24, 1902. 
$1 PER YEAR 
A ROBBER PLANT ON CORN. 
HOW CORN SMUT GROWS. 
What Can Bo Done for It? 
“Papa, there is something on your corn and we 
don’t know what it is; it looks like a bees’ nest.” 
This is the word which came to me in letters from 
three young men at home, two of whom, aged five and 
eight, are growing a little corn of their own. This 
suggested the idea of examining some of these “bees’ 
nests” to see what I could learn. Three are shown 
at Fig. 139, but they do not look so much like nests 
now as they have done, for they are old and torn. 
Some of them are among the tassels and those do not 
grow so large. The one in the center must have look¬ 
ed very much like a nest when it was younger, for it 
is as large as my two fists, and the gray covering still 
shows in many places. Black powder falls from all 
the torn places, leaving only a quantity of woody 
shreds behind. 
If there is a big nest at one point on the stalk there 
are often smaller ones along at different points. In 
some cases the whole tassel will be covered with them. 
The reason for this is probably that this plant sprouts 
up from the roots, so to speak, for this peculiar “nest” 
is really a plant. It is a robber plant, 
which, like some people, produces 
nothing itself, but lives upon what oth¬ 
ers have produced. The corn plant 
cannot live entirely upon the mineral 
matter and water which it takes up 
from the soil. This crude matter must 
go to the leaves and the sunlight must 
help to combine with it carbon dioxide 
gas from the air to form starch before 
the plant can use it. This “nest” or 
“smut” plant cannot do that. If it 
ever possessed the power to prepare its 
own food, it has lost that power by 
lack of use. Now it must depend upon 
the corn plant to prepare its food for 
it, or rather, it steals some of the food 
which the corn plant has prepared for 
its own use. When a seed of this plant 
falls upon a corn plant under the right 
conditions, it germinates and sends its 
roots in among the cells of the corn 
plant to absorb the food needed for its 
growth. At length the real fruiting 
part, corresponding to the part of com¬ 
mon plants which grows above ground, 
forms a “nest” similar to that which 
produced by every bunch which fruits, and they are 
so light that they are very easily blown about. A 
broken stalk is likely to show a bunch of smut, be¬ 
cause the break afforded a good place for a spore to 
lodge and grow. If corn has been grown nearby the 
previous year, much of the smut was doubtless left 
upon the ground. Some of those spores are likely to 
find lodgment upon that grown the following year. 
The longer a piece of land is occupied by corn the 
more smut there is likely to be. When the stalks are 
fed much of the smut will go to the manure pile. This 
manure is likely to be used upon the corn ground and 
again the spores are present, waiting for the chance 
to grow. Smut cannot be prevented by treating the 
seed corn with hot water or formalin, but it can be 
reduced by destroying the young “nests,” before they 
have burst and scattered their spores. The manure 
pile and the old corn ground cannot then infect the 
next year’s crop. As often happens with other plant 
diseases, some varieties of corn are more resistant 
than others. Selecting those least subject to it may 
sometimes prove the most practicable remedy. 
Life is not all sunshine, even with corn smut, which 
seems to avoid working for a living. Probably not one 
spore in 10,000 ever finds a chance to grow. In cut- 
have followed for about 15 years. After the hull drops 
I watch the fruit and if the curculio is working, in 
two or three days I spray the trees with Bordeaux 
Mixture. For each 40 gallons of Bordeaux put from 
four to six ounces of Paris-green, well stirred up, 
and spray the trees thoroughly. In about six or seven 
days give them another spraying with the same ma¬ 
terial and that will be sufficient. The Bordeaux and 
Paris-green settle in the slit where the egg is and as 
soon as the egg hatches and the worm begins eating 
he takes a bite of poison and dies. The Bordeaux 
answers to prevent the fruit rot and mildew that we 
often have where the foliage partly or all drops off 
before the fruit matures, so that the sun scalds the 
fruit and makes it worthless. I have been in the fruit 
business for 40 years and since I quit jarring plum 
trees and went to spraying about 15 years ago I have 
never failed to get a crop of plums; but I always thin 
the fruit so as not to overload my trees. «r. c. 
Cay wood, N. Y._ 
VARIOUS FORMS OF CORN SMUT. Fig. 139. 
MULCH VS. SHEEP FOR ORCHARDS. 
I am afraid Mr. Woodward in his article on page 318 
is firing at long range, for I feel sure he would change 
his opinion as to cost of apples grown by the mulch 
method if he should see the method in 
_ practice. He states that I must some¬ 
time add potash and phosphoric acid 
to my soil or my crops will fail. When 
will this time come? Our experiment 
stations inform us that analysis shows 
that our soil contains practically an 
inexhaustable supply of those two ele¬ 
ments in an unavailable form. Now, 
it is my business to unlock those ele¬ 
ments in the cheapest possible way. 
The latest agricultural research teaches 
us that decaying vegetable matter 
either by the aid of bacteria or action 
of gases formed by its decay releases 
these elements and stores them in the 
best-known form to be assimilated by 
plants. The mulch method aims to 
accumulate this decayed vegetable 
matter or humus, not alone for its 
action on the needed elements, but 
also for its capacity to hold water, it 
acting like a sponge in this respect. 
There is a Spitzenburg tree in our 
orchard that has stood this treatment 
for a hundred years, bearing regularly 
as long as I can remember and prom¬ 
puzzled my boys. The botanist will not speak of the 
“seed” and “root” of such a plant as this. He calls 
them the spore and mycelium, and, of course, these 
are correct. They differ from the true seed and root 
yet the office of the spore is to produce a plant, and 
of the mycelium to gather food for the growth 
of that plant. The linen-tester will not show us these 
root-like feeding threads for they are too small. The 
stalk is discolored in places and it seems from their 
behavior that the threads must run for some distance 
along the stalk, breaking out here and there to form 
a fruiting body. The millions of tiny spores produced 
by these fruiting bodies form the black powder which 
rattles from them. In the grain smuts, like that of 
oats, the spores often cling to the seed, are put into 
the ground with it and there germinate. The feeding 
threads enter the tender young plant, grow as it grows 
and at last fruit with it in the head. When such seeds 
are treated with hot water or formalin before being 
sown, the spores are killed and a clean crop of grain 
is likely to follow. Spores of corn smut do not seem 
to enter the plant in that way. They appear to reach 
the plant in the field while it is growing. How they 
get there is not easy to say, but millions of them are 
ting open some of the large bunches I found small 
white maggots here and there, apparently feeding 
upon the spores. Some of the bunches had begun to 
rot, which doubtless means that bacteria or possibly 
still another fungus, even more degraded than the 
smut, were preying upon it. Thus is Nature ever at 
work to prevent an undue increase of any of her chil¬ 
dren. [Prof. ] FRED W. CARD. 
SPRAYING FOR THE PLUM CURCULIO. 
On page 302 G. R. A., Hancock Co., Me., wants to 
know the habits of the plum curculio. W. M. Mun¬ 
son, Maine Experiment Station, makes a good ex¬ 
planation of the curculio, but he fails to state the 
sure remedy. He says soon after the fruit has set 
the insect makes a crescent shaped slit and in this 
it lays an egg. That is true. Now, how soon after 
the fruit is set is the egg laid? My experience is after 
the blossoms fall the fruit is covered with a thin hull, 
which will cover the fruit for several days. After the 
hull drops the fruit is ready for the little fellow to do 
its work. If you jar the trees it should be done for 
10 days each morning, quite a hard job if one has a 
large orchard of plums. I will give the plan that I 
ising a full crop again this year. 
Mr. Woodward gives an estimated gain of $6 per 
acre in fertility and $8 in pasturage. During the time 
his sheep were making this $14 gain per acre eating 
fallen apples, I was picking up from the grass mulch 
the Astrachan, Oldenburg, Wealthy and Gravenstein, 
practically uninjured, and selling them for top prices, 
for these kinds of apples should be left on the trees 
as long as possible to be at their best. Those picked 
up brought at least $60 per acre, pretty expensive 
sheep feed. I think, furthermore, that the yield per 
tree was increased by leaving the apples until fully 
matured. I fight the Codling moth by spraying; have 
had no trouble with the apple maggot; am saved the 
expense of building fences to enclose the sheep, and 
can employ the time that would be spent in caring 
for the sheep in growing strawberries, which pay 
one much better. 
My first experience in apple growing was watching 
the sheep to keep aiem from girdling some young 
trees set among the older ones. I came to the con¬ 
clusion then that growing fruit trees and sheep were 
a poor combination, so first the sheep went, then the 
hogs, and then the cows, all but one, and I have never 
