On this account it has been deemed expedient to offer to the consideration of farmers, engravings of this destructive plant, made from the drawings of the accurate and ingenious Mr. Bauer, Botanical Painter to his Majesty, accompanied with his explanation, from whence it is presumed an attentive reader will be able to form a correct idea of the facts intended to be represented, and a just opinion whether or not they are, as is presumed to be the case, correct and satisfactory.

In order, however, to render Mr. Bauer's explanation more easy to be understood, it is necessary to premise, that the striped appearance of the surface of a straw which may be seen with a common magnifying glass, is caused by alternate longitudinal partitions of the bark, the one imperforate, and the other furnished with one or two rows of pores or mouths, shut in dry, open in wet weather, and well calculated to imbibe fluid whenever the straw is damp.'

By these pores, which exist also on the leaves and glumes, it is presumed that the seeds of the fungus gain admission, and at the bottom of the hollows to which they lead, they germinate and push their minute roots, no doubt (though these have not yet been traced) into the cellular texture beyond the bark, where they draw their nourishment, by intercepting the sap that was intended by nature for the nutri

1 Pores or mouths similar to these, are placed by nature on the surface of the leaves, branches, and stems, of all perfect plants; a provision intended no doubt to compensate, in some measure, the want of loco-motion in vegetables. A plant cannot when thirsty go to the brook and drink, but it can open innumerable orifices for the reception of every degree of moisture, which either falls in the shape of rain and of dew, or is separated from the mass of water always held in solution by the atmosphere; it seldom happens in the driest season, that the night does not afford some refreshment of this kind, to restore the moisture that has been exhausted by the heats of the preceding day.

ment of the grain; the corn of course becomes shrivelled in proportion as the fungi are more or less numerous on the plant; and as the kernel only is abstracted from the grain, while the cortical part remains undiminished, the proportion of flour to bran in blighted corn, is always reduced in the same degree as the corn is made light. Some corn of this year's crop will not yield a stone of flour from a sack of wheat; and it is not impossible that in some cases the corn has been so completely robbed of its flour by the fungus, that if the proprietor should choose to incur the expense of thrashing and grinding it, bran would be the produce, with scarce an atom of flour for each grain.

Every species of corn, properly so called, is subject to the Blight; but it is observable that spring corn is less damaged by it than winter, and rye less than wheat, probably because it is ripe and cut down before the fungus has had time to increase in any great degree.-Tull says that "white cone or bearded wheat, which hath its straw like a rush, full of pith, is less subject to Blight than Lanımas wheat, which ripens a week later." See page 74. The spring wheat of Lincolnshire was not in the least shrivelled this year, though the straw was in some degree infected : the millers allowed that it was the best sample brought to market. Barley was in some places considerably spotted, but as the whole of the stem of that grain is naturally enveloped in the hose or basis of the leaf, the fungus can in no case gain admittance to the straw; it is however to be observed that barley rises from the flail lighter this year, than was expected from the appearance of the crop when gather

ed in.

Though diligent inquiry was made during the last autumn, no information of importance relative to the origin

This was written, January 1805.

1

or the progress of the blight could be obtained: this is not to be wondered at; for as no one of the persons applied to had any knowledge of the real cause of the malady, none of them could direct their curiosity in a proper channel. Now that its nature and cause have been explained, we may reasonably expect that a few years will produce an interesting collection of facts and observations, and we may hope that some progress will be made towards the very desirable attainment of either a preventive or a cure.

It seems probable that the leaf is first infected in the spring, or early in the summer, before the corn shoots up into straw, and that the fungus is then of an orange color;' after the straw is become yellow, the fungus assumes a deep chocolate brown; each individual is so small that every pore on a straw will produce from 20 to 40 fungi, as may be seen in the plate, and every one of these will no doubt produce at least 100 seeds; if then one of these seeds tillows out into the number of plants that appear at the bottom of a pore, how incalculably large must the increase be ! A few diseased plants scattered over a field must very speedily infect a whole neighbourhood, for the seeds of fungi are not much heavier than air, as every one who has trod upon a ripe puff-ball must have observed, by seeing the dust, among which is its seed, rise up and float on before him.

How long it is before this fungus arrives at puberty, and scatters its seeds in the wind, can only be guessed at by the analogy of others; probably the period of a generation

I The Abbé Tessier in his Traité des Maladies des Grains, tells us, that in France this disease first shows itself in minute spots of a dirty white color on the leaves and stems, which spots extend themselves by degrees, and in time change to a yellow color, and throw off a dry orange colored powder. pp. 201, 340.

is short, possibly not more than a week in a hot season: if so, how frequently in the latter end of the summer must the air be loaded as it were with this animated dust, ready, whenever a gentle breeze, accompanied with humidity, shall give the signal, to intrude itself into the pores of thousands of acres of corn. Providence, however, careful of the creatures it has created, has benevolently provided against the too extensive multiplication of any species of being; was it otherwise, the minute plants and animals, ene-, mies against which man has the fewest means of defence, would increase to an inordinate extent; this, however, can in no case happen, unless many predisposing causes afford their combined assistance. But for this wise and beneficent provision, the plague of slugs, the plague of mice, the plagues of grubs, wire-worms, chafers, and many other creatures whose power of multiplying is countless as the sands of the sea, would, long before this time, have driven mankind, and all the larger animals, from the face of the earth.

Though all old persons who have concerned themselves in agriculture remember the Blight in Corn many years, yet some have supposed that of late years it has materially increased; this however does not seem to be the case. Tull, in his Horse-hoeing Husbandry, p. 74, tells us, that the year 1725 1725" was a year of Blight, the like of which was never before heard of, and which he hopes may never happen again;" yet the average price of wheat in the year 1726, when the harvest of 1725 was at market, was only 36s. 4d. and the average of the five years of which it makes the first, 37s. 7d.-1797 was also a year of great Blight; the price of wheat in 1798 was 49s. 1d. and the average of the five years, from 1795 to 1799, 63s. 5d.1

'The scarcity of the year 1801, was in part occasioned by a mildew, which in many places is said to have attacked the plants of wheat on the S. E. side only, but was principally owing to the very wet har

The climate of the British Isles is not the only one that is liable to the Blight in corn; it happens occasionally in every part of Europe, and probably in all countries where corn is grown. Italy is very subject to it, and the last harvest of Sicily has been materially hurt by it. Speci mens received from the colony of New South Wales, show that considerable mischief was done to the wheat crop there, in the year 1803, by a parasitic plant, very similar to the English one.

It has been long admitted by farmers, though scarcely credited by botanists, that wheat in the neighbourhood of a barberry bush seldom escapes the Blight. The village of Rollesby in Norfolk, where barberries abound, and wheat seldom succeeds, is called by the opprobrious appellation of Mildew Rollesby. Some observing men have of late attributed this very perplexing effect to the farina of the flowers of the barberry, which is in truth yellow, and resembles in some degree the appearance of the rust, or what is presumed to be the Blight in its early state.

It is, however, notorious to all botanical observers, that the leaves of the barberry are very subject to the attack of a yellow parasitic fungus, larger, but otherwise much resembling, the rust in corn.

Is it not more than possible, that the parasitic fungus of the barberry and that of wheat are one and the same species,

vest of 1800; the deficiency of wheat at that harvest, was found, on a very accurate calculation, somewhat to exceed one-fourth, but wheat was not the only grain that failed, all others, and potatoes also, were materially deficient. This year the wheat is probably somewhat more damaged than it was in 1800, and barley somewhat less than an average crop, every other article of agricultural food is abundant, and potatoes one of the largest crops that has been known; but for these blessings on the labor of man, wheat must before this time have reached an exorbitant price.