of employing the tainted flour would be per- 
fectly unobjectionable if the odour were innox- 
lous, it becomes censurable and wicked when 
good reason exists for suspecting the odour to 
be seriously unwholesome. 
The sporules of both Uvredo segetum and Uredo 
fotida were long believed and have recently been 
proved to find their way into corn-plants by en- 
tering their spongioles with the moisture and 
ascending their interior with the sap. 
is little doubt,’ says Mr. George W. Johnson, 
“but that the mode in which smut is imparted 
to the plant is by its roots imbibing the extremely 
minute seeds of the fungus along with the mois- 
ture of the soil; and this opinion is confirmed 
by the observation that the disease is most pre- 
valent when the winter has been mild, and the 
spring wet,—for in such seasons the abundant 
moisture passing through the soil is most likely 
to convey the seeds to the mouths of the plant’s 
radical fibres.” “That the sporules enter by the 
roots and circulate in the plant,” says the Rev. 
Edwin Sidney, “has been the surmise of most 
observers ; but no one has yet seen them grow; 
nor would this be the normal mode of growth. 
The spores themselves are undoubtedly too large 
to enter either by the stomata of the leaves, or 
the spongioles of the roots. Some ingenious 
experiments have been recently made by Mr. 
Berkeley, which he most kindly communicated 
to the author, that appear to establish the theory 
that these contents of the spores do enter the 
plant in the way suspected, and grow. The mode 
of proceeding was to immerse some seeds of wheat 
in water containing bunt. One of the first ap- 
-pearances was a curious mould with peculiar 
spores that sprung upon the spores of bunt. The 
plants which came up from these seeds were evi- 
dently affected ; but no communication whatever 
could be traced between the cells of these plants 
and the shoots thrown out by the spores. No 
intrusion whatever of the mycelium developed 
by the bunt spores into the wheat could be dis- 
covered. This looks, therefore, as if the fine 
contents of the spores do certainly propagate the 
fungus.” “ Although the bunt-fungus confines 
its attacks to the young seed,’ says Professor 
Menslow, “it seems to be a condition essential to 
its propagation, that it should be introduced into 
the plant during the early stages of its growth, 
and that its sporules are most readily absorbed 
by the root during the germination of the seed 
from which the plant has sprung. It has been 
clearly proved that wheat plants may be easily 
infected, and the disease thus propagated, by 
simply rubbing the seeds before they are sown 
with the black powder, or spores, of the fungus. 
Tt is also as clearly ascertained that, if seeds 
thus tainted be thoroughly cleansed, the plants 
raised from them will not be infected ; and this 
fact is now so well established, that the practice 
of washing or steeping seed-wheat in certain so- 
lutions almost universally prevails.” 
SMUT. 
“ There. 
The following table, compiled from a paper in 
the Farmer’s Journal for June 1828, shows the 
highly infectious nature of smut, and the good 
effects of pickling :— 
I, Wheat merely put into the bag where 
smutted wheat had been. 
Old wheat, 
New Kentish red, kiln. dried, 
Yellow Lammas, do. 
Spring wheat, haying a small quan- 
tity of smut - powder shaken 
amongst it, more than lin 2. do. 
IJ. Wheat when moistened rubbed with smut- 
1 in 80 smutted 
1in20 do. 
lini o: a ao: 
powder. 
Old red wheat, lin ¥ smutted 
New do. Jin 6. do. 
Do., kiln- dried, lain’ 8 dor 
White wheat, do! lin 8 do. 
Yellow Wammas. do. lin 7% do. 
Spring wheat, do. 8inl0 do. 
III. Wheat when ae eanee rubbed with smui- 
powder, but afterwards, previous to sowing, 
washed in a solution of vitriol and chamber- 
lye. 
Old wheat, 2 i 1 in 2,000 smutted 
New wheat, Clean. 
Do., kiln-dried, Clean. 
White wheat, do. Clean. 
35 in 2,000 smutted 
The chief preventive of smut in wheat is the 
steeping of the seed-corn in some suitable soln- 
tion. The. spores which, at the time of thrash- 
ing, are dispersed from smutted ears in the form 
of a fine powder, and which attach themselves to 
the sound grains, adhere with considerable oh- 
stinacy by means of an oily or greasy matter in 
their own substance, and cannot be thoroughly 
cleaned away except by means either of an alkali 
which shall combine with the oily matter and 
convert it into soap, or of some powerful sub- 
stance which shall be adverse enough to vegetable 
life to kill the spores and yet not so adverse as 
to kill or injure the grains. The substances most 
commonly employed in alkaline steeps are lime, 
and salts of soda, potash, and ammonia; and 
those of a kilhng kind most commonly employed 
are arsenic, sulphate of copper, nitric acid, mu- 
riatic acid, and sulphuric acid. The use if poi- 
sons, lomaenen — particularly violent ones —is 
altogether unnecessary, and very dangerous, and 
not a little culpable; and the use even of ex- 
cessively pungent substances, which are not 
strictly poisonous, is never so politic, and per- 
haps never so efficient, as that of the alkalies or 
of common salt or of some mixture of saline sub- 
stances. The following table shows the results 
of extensive and accurate experiments, conducted 
by Mr. Bevan, in the growth upon a sandy soil 
at Leighton in Bedfordshire of specimens of 
wheat-seed steeped in a variety of aus ,—the 
columns A showing the results from sound grain, 
and the columns B showing those from smutted 
samples :— 
Yellow Lammas, do. 
Pee 
