= 
| 
a 
RUT. 
gaid to be the U. rubigo, and those which have 
oblong ones the U. linearis. They form oval 
spots and blotches; and when the spores have 
burst through the epidermis, they are readily 
dispersed. The rust, the red-rag, and the red- 
robin varieties make the plants look as if they 
were dusted with a rustiness of some colour from 
yellow to brown; and the red-gum variety occurs 
only on the ear, and appears like gummy exuda- 
tions, and consists in groups of red, minute, glu- 
tinous globules, interspersed with transparent 
fibres. Professor Henslow found the red-rag 
more common within the range of his observa- 
tion than any of the other kinds; and he says, 
“Tt abounded in the form of an orange powder 
which exuded from the inner surfaces of the chaff- 
scales, but was scarcely, if ever, to be seen in the 
skin of the seed. It might also be traced in 
patches beneath the epidermis of the straw; but 
I did not observe that it had burst through the 
epidermis anywhere, excepting on the inside of 
the chaff. It seemed to prevail more among the 
rough-chaffed wheats than others.” The rust, in 
its several varieties, is not so injurious as the 
true mildew; and is perhaps the least destruc- 
tive of all the parasite diseases which attack 
wheat in Britain; and is somewhat readily dis- 
sipated by an outburst and continued play of 
sunny weather; but is generally more injurious, 
when it appears, in the later stages of growth, 
on the glumes and the palee, than when it ap- 
pears, in the earlier stages, on the blade and the 
culm. The methods of preventing it are the same 
as in the case of mildew. 
RUT. A small, narrow, surface drain, made 
intentionally with a spade, or unintentionally 
with the wheel of a cart or carriage. 
RUTTING SEASON. ‘The season of the lower 
animals, in their respective species, being in heat 
for pairing or for copulation. 
RUTA. See Ruz. 
RUTA BAGA. See Turnip. 
RYEH,—botanically Secale. A genus of cereal 
grasses of the wheat tribe. The two glumes or 
outer chalf of its spikelets are bristly or awl- 
shaped, while those of wheat are large and so 
far valved or hollowed as to include a consider- 
able portion of the lower floret; and this is the 
principal botanical distinction between the two 
genera. | 
The History of Rye—Great obscurity hangs 
over the early history of rye; and considerable 
difficulty continues to the present day to attend 
the determination of some of its species and 
varieties, Certain interesting ancient notices of 
cereal grasses are thought by some commentators 
to refer to rye, and by others not; some plants 
which the botanists of a former age regarded as 
species of rye, are now assigned to the genera 
Triticum and Agropyrum; and two or three 
varieties, or perhaps species, which continue to 
be called rye, either hold a doubtful place be- 
tween rye and wheat, or are not sufficiently 
RYE. 103 
known to be spoken of with certainty. Yet a 
few old facts respecting rye are well authen- 
ticated, and at the same time possess considera- 
ble interest. 
Rye has been variously supposed to be a native 
of Crete, of the Crimea, and of the Levant or of 
Egypt; but it possesses the constitution of a 
plant inured to the coldest regions, and grows 
most abundantly beyond the Yakutsk on the 
surface of a frozen subsoil, and seems, on the evi- 
dence both of its own nature and of some of the 
earliest records of it, to have been introduced to 
all other countries where it is found from some 
northerly part of Asiatic Tartary. The grain 
mentioned by Moses and Isaiah, which the au- 
thorised English translation of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures calls rye, and by Herodotus, which some 
old scholiasts regard as rye, appears to have been 
the species of wheat formerly called Zea spelia, 
and now called Triticum spelta, and popularly 
spelt. Rye does not seem to have been known 
to Aristotle or Dioscorides, and is not mentioned 
by Cato, Virgil, Columella, or Varro, and may 
therefore be inferred to have held no place among 
the ancient agricultural crops of Greece or Italy. 
Pliny, however, describes it as cultivated by the 
Taurini in the part of Cisalpine Gaul which now 
constitutes Piedmont, and says that they call it 
Asia,—a circumstance which possibly may point 
to their ancestors having brought it with them 
remotely from Asiatic Tartary, and immediately 
from the valley of the Danube. 
“‘ Rye appears to have been in Pliny’s time, as 
now, cultivated not alone for its grain, but also 
as fodder for cattle; for after saying, that rye 
and farrago (which he afterwards explains to be 
a thick sowing of tailing wheat mixed with 
vetches) required no other cultivation than a 
harrowing, indicating thereby that rye is best 
suited, as the fact is, to a light sandy soil, since 
a strong soil cannot be cultivated by a mere 
harrowing,—and that in Africa, barley (which 
Pére Harduin expounds to mean winter barley) 
is used for the same purpose, being sown together 
with a degenerate vetch, which Pliny calls cracca, 
—he adds, that all the articles which he has enu- 
merated are destined for cattle food. Pliny fur- 
ther says, that rye is the worst of grain, and only 
fit to repel famine ; that it is productive, but is 
of aslender straw; that it is miserable for its 
blackness, but remarkable for its weight; that 
wheat is sometimes mixed with it to mitigate its 
bitterness,—but that even so, it is most un- 
acceptable to the stomach; that it grows in dry 
soil, and makes a return of a hundred grains for 
one, and itself suffices for manure, thereby pro- 
bably meaning, that as it is a good forager, it will 
grow without dung. When we recollect that 
the means were familiar to Pliny of comparing 
rye with the splendid wheats of Italy, we may 
not, perhaps, much wonder at his low appreci- 
ation of this homely though nutritive and useful 
grain. Its use at that time as a bread-stuff was 
