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smutty, earth-colored powder. A close inspection shows a total disor¬ 
ganization of its structure. Its cellular layers have disappeared—there 
is no trace of gluten—there is disease and decomposition pervading the 
entire organism of the grain. Flour, into the composition of which 
smutty wheat has entered to any extent, is darker and deadish , and has 
a decayed, slightly bitter, pungent taste. 
Smut is, truly speaking, a disease of the grain. It is not the effect of 
weather or culture. FTo cause can be assigned for it, more than for other 
disarrangements of organic functions by secret and hidden causes, and 
the results of which are disease and death. It is, apparently, infectious. 
If not guarded against, a single head to an acre will, in a few years, cor¬ 
rupt an entire crop. It is supposed to spread from the adherence of par¬ 
ticles of the dry, smutty dust to the furzy end of the seed, by which its 
i 
entire composition is infected, disease fastens upon the germ and is de¬ 
veloped in the future harvest. 
The remedy for smut is very simple, and if carefully applied is effect¬ 
ual. The seed should be soaked in water and then rolled in lime. This 
treatment destroys the virus, smut or whatever the infection may be, or, 
at least, under it the infectious principle disappears. Followed for a few 
years it will cure an entire crop of this troublesome and injurious dis¬ 
ease. 
This is the only disease, properly so called, to which wheat is subject. 
The other accidents are mere influences of the atmosphere, or unfavora¬ 
ble seasons. Upon these causes are dependent a number of agents from 
which the wheat crop suffers more or less. The principal of these is 
rust—a formation upon the stalks, the nature of which is disputed, while 
the grain is still growing. Whether by some poisonous property, or by 
obstructing the surface pores through which the sap circulates, it destroys 
the life of the plant, and the berry withers and dies without arriving at 
muturity. This is the cause of shrunken wheat. The grain loses all its 
plump, healthy, full proportions, as well as its best nutriment and sweet¬ 
ness, yields light measure, and a dark, poor, lifeless flour. 
Many theories have been advanced in regard to rust. It was once at¬ 
tributed to the honey dew—a vapor which the vulgar imagined distilled 
in virulent particles along the halm and chaff. Late speculators have 
supposed it to be produced by a superabundance of sap generated in 
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