ON MILDEW, OR MELDEW. 
37 
both of animals and vegetables, to their true cause, even if we 
should not be enabled to prescribe a remedy for them ; and 
upon reflection in regard to the various circumstances connect- 
ed with the mildew in grain-crops, some thoughts have arisen 
and have matured into opinions, which I will throw into the com- 
mon stock, that farmers may judge of them, and see how far 
they agree with their own experience and observation. 
The conditions under which it is believed that wheat ar- 
rives at the greatest perfection are, a cool season and a reason- 
ably dry atmosphere at the time of the filling and maturation 
of the grain ; it beingassumed that the soil is sufficiently moist 
to furnish the requisite nutriment for a healthy state of the 
plants. 
The summer of 1816 was of this description, and the wheat 
of that year was of extraordinary weight and fineness ; and 
what was then considered of equal importance, the crop, when 
brought to market, sold for three dollars per bushel of 60 lbs., 
a price it has never since commanded. A worthy farmer, re- 
siding in Montgomery county, had that season an average of 
32 bushels and 8 lbs. per acre for his whole crop, and sold it 
for 3 dollars per bushel, being a little more than 96 dollars 
per acre, and the farm on which it grew cost him 24 dollars 
per acre some twenty years previous. 
The circumstances, which are supposed to be always pre- 
sent in a greater or less degree when the crop becomes dis- 
eased with mildew, are the following, viz. : The atmosphere 
saturated with moisture, in the form of fog or otherwise, a high 
temperatureof the air, and scarcely a breath of wind stirring, the 
latter being a necessary consequence of the former conditions, 
because, if the wind was active, the moisture would be dissi- 
pated and the heat rendered less sensible. In fact, such 
weather as is familiarly known by the term hot and muggy, 
and which sometimes relaxes the human system to that de- 
gree that it seems as if it was on the point of dissolving ; the 
reason being, that the air is so saturated with moisture that it 
refuses to take up the insensible perspiration from the surface 
of the human body, and the heat, which would necessarily go 
