"3d. All fubftantives ending in e, which are derived from adverbs, as die Gröfze, fize; die Güte, goodnefs; die Liebe, love, &c,

NEUTER are,

"Ift. The names of metals, countries, and places. EXCEPT der Stahl, the fteel; der Tomback, pinchbeck; der Zink, zink; die Pfalz, Palatinate; and those which end in cy, as die Türkey, Turkey, &c. "2d. All derivatives ending in chen, and lein.

"3d. All derivatives ending in thum. EXCEPT der Reichthum, riches; der Irrthum, error; der Beweisthum, argument.

4th. All collectives and iteratives, which begin with the fyllable But when not collective or an iterative fignification, they do not belong to this rule.

5th. All which may be used as substantives, without being formed as fuch; as

das Aber,

A,
B,

the word but.

J.

farewell,

;} and all the letters in the alphabet.” P. 61.

Notwithstanding the various merits of this very ingenious publication, were we inclined to cavil, fome faults might be difcovered, fome imperfections noticed; but where there is fo much to commend, we are always ready to exprefs our general fatisfaction, and our unfeigned wishes for the circulation and fuccefs of a work of great utility.

ART. XIV. A fhort Account of the Caufe of the Difeafe in Corn, called by Farmers, the Blight, the Mildew, and the Ruft. With Two Plates. 4to. 14 pp. Printed by Bulmer, 1805.

THIS

HIS is one of the most interesting and important agricul tural tracts, which have ever appeared. The difeafe in corn, named in the title-page, is a public and general calamity; and whoever shall clearly afcertain its caufe, and excite others. to obviate its difaftrous effects, will be a benefactor of high rank to his own, and to all other countries. The Prefident of the Royal Society has here applied, to an excellent purpose, his univerfally acknowledged fkill in botany. We fhall give an account of this work (at prefent only printed for private gift) fomewhat copious; though no one (we think) will be fatisfied, without poffefling the work itfelf; which we hear will be printed for general use. "Botanists

Y

BRIT. CRIT. VOL. XXV. MARCH, 1805.

"Botanists have long known that the Blight in Corn is occafioned by the growth of a minute parafitic fungus or mushroom on the leaves, ftems, and glumes of the living plant. Felice Fontana published, in the year 1767, an elaborate account of this mifchievous weed, with microfcopic figures, which give a tolerable idea of its form; more modern botanilts have given figures both of corn and of grafs affected by it, but have not used high magnifying powers in their researches. "Agriculturists do not appear to have paid, on this head, fufficient attention to the difcoveries of their fellow-labourers in the field of nature; for though fcarce any English writer of note on the fubject of rural economy has failed to flate his opinion of the origin of this evil, no one of them has yet attributed it to the real caufe, unlefs Mr. Kirby's excellent papers on fome difeafes of corn, publifhed in the Tranfactions of the Linnean Society, are confidered as agricultural effays.

On this account it has been deemed expedient to offer to the confideration of farmers, engravings of this destructive piant, made from the drawings of the accurate and ingenious Mr. Bauer, Botanical Painter to his Majefty, accompanied with his explanation, from whence it is prefumed an attentive reader will be able to form a correct idea of the its intended to be reprefented, and just opinion whether or not they are, as is prefumed to be the cafe, correct and fatisfactory.” P. 5.

We must proceed in making extracts, which do not admit of abridgment; and which will diftinctly exhibit the subject to our readers.

"In order, however, to render Mr. Bauer's explanation more easy to be underft cd, it is neceffary to premife, that the ftriped appearance of the furface of a traw which may be feen with a common magnifying glafs, is caufed by alternate longitudinal partitions of the bark, the one imperforate, and the other furnished with one or two rows of pores or mouths, fhut in dry, open in wet weather, and well calculated to imbibe fluid whenever the raw is damp.

"By thefe pores, which exift alo on the leaves and glumes, it is prefumed that the feeds 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 thefe have not yet been traced) into the cellular texture beyond the bark, where they draw their nourishment, by intercepting the fan that was intended by nature for the nutriment of the grain; the corn of courfe becomes fhrivelled in proportion as the fungi are more or lefs 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 fame degree as the corn is made light." P. 6.

"Every fpecies of corn, properly fo called, is fubject to the Blight; but it is obfervable that fpring corn is lefs damaged by it than winter, and rye lefs than wheat, probably becaufe it is ripe and cut down before the fungus has had time to increafe in any large degree." P. 7.

"It feems probable that the leaf is first infected in the fpring, or early in the fummer, before the corn fhoots up into ftraw, and that the fungus is then of an orange colour; after the ftraw has become yellow, the fungus affumes a deep chocolate brown: each individual is to fmall that every pore on a ftraw will produce from 20 to 40 fungi, and every one of thefe will no doubt produce at leaft 100 feeds; if then one of thefe feeds tillows out into the number of plants that appear at the bottom of a pore, how incalculably large muft the increase be! A few difeafed plants fcattered over a field muft very speedily infect a whole neighbourhood, for the feeds of fungi are not much heavier than air, as every one who has trod upon a ripe puff-ball mult have obferved by feeing the duft, among which is its feed, rife up and float on before him.

"How long it is before this fungus arrives at puberty, and scatters its feeds in the wind, can only be gueffed at by the analogy of others; probably the period of a generation is fhort, poffibly not more than a week in a hot feafon: if fo, how frequently in the latter end of the fummer muft the air be loaded as it were with this animated duft, ready, whenever a gentle breeze, accompanied with humidity, fhall give the fignal 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 extenfive mu tiplication of any fpecies of being; was it otherwife, the minute plants and animals, enemies against which man has the feweft means of defence, would increase to an inordinate extent; this however, can in no cafe happen, unless many predifpofing caufes afford their combined affiitance. But for this wife and beneficent provifion, the plague of flugs, the plague of mice, the plagues of grubs, wire-worms, chafers, and many other creatures whofe power of multiplying is countless as the fands of the fea, would, long before this time, have driven mankind, and all the larger animals, from the face of the earth." P. 8.

"The climate of the British Isles is not the only one that is liable to the blight in corn: it happens occafionally in every part of Europe, and probably in all countries where corn is grown." P. 10.

"It has been long admitted by farmers, though fcarcely credited by botanists, that wheat in the neighbourhood of a barberry bush feldom efcapes the Blight. The village of Rollefby, in Norfolk, where barberries abound, and wheat feldom fucceeds, is called by the opprobrious appellation of Mildew Rollefby. Some obferving men have of late attributed this very perplexing effect to the farina of the flowers of the barberry, which is in truth yellow, and refembles in fome degree the appearance of the ruft, or what is prefumed to be the Blight in its early ftate.

It is, however, notorious to all botanical obfervers, that the leaves of the barberry are very fubject to the artack of a yellow parafitic fungus, larger, but otherwife much refembling the ruft in corn.

"Is it not more than pollible, that the parafitic fungus of the barberry and that of wheat are one and the fame fpecies, and that the feed is transferred from the barberry to the corn?" Ib.

Y 2

Here

Here we must interpofe a remark, for the accuracy of which we can refer to the author himself. We have heard from good authority, that within a Lincolnshire diftrict of many miles (from Bofton to Bourn) the Blight was fcarcely lefs fatal to the last year's crop than in Rollefby; yet, within that diftrict, perhaps not one barberry-bush exifts.

"It would be prefumptuous to offer any remedy for a malady, the progrefs of which is fo little understood; conjectures, however, founded on the origin here affigned to it may be hazarded without offence.

"It is believed to begin early in the fpring, and first to appear on the leaves of wheat in the form of ruft, of orange-coloured powder; at this feafon, the fungus will, in all probability, require as many weeks for its progrefs from infancy to puberty as it does days during the heats of autuinn; but a very few plants of wheat, thus infected, are quite fufficient, if the fungus be permitted to ripen its feed, to spread the malady over a field, or indeed over a whole parish.

"The chocolate-coloured Blight is little obferved till the corn is approaching very nearly to ripenefs; it appears then in the field in fpots, which increase very rapidly in fize, and are in calm weather fomewhat circular, as if the discafe took its origin from a central pofi

tion.

"May it not happen, then, that the fungus is brought into the field in a few ftalks of infected ftraw, uncorrupted among the mass of dung laid in the ground at the time of fowing? It must be confeffed, however, that the clover lays, on which no dung from the yard was ufed, were as much infected last autumn as the manured crops. The immenfe multiplication of the disease in the laft feafon feems, however, to account for this; as the air was no doubt frequently charged with feed for miles together, and depofited it indifcriminately on all forts of crops." P. 11.

Here we obferve, that if the difeafe can thus originate, and be thus communicated, is it not (probably) occafioned by the manure carried on lands in June, preparatory to the fowing of turnip-feed, and thence communicated to fields of corn?

"It cannot, however, be an expenfive precaution, to fearch diligently in the fpring for young plants of wheat infected with the dif eafe, and carefully to extirpate them, as well as all graffes, for feveral are fubject to this or a fimilar malady, which have the appearance of orange-coloured or of black ftripes on their leaves, or on their flraw; and if experience hall prove, that uncorrupted ftraw can carry the difeafe with it into the field, it will coft the farmer but little precaution to prevent any mixture of fresh ftraw from being carried out with his rotten dung to the wheat field." P. 12.

"It will be useful to obferve attentively, whether cattle in the fraw-yard thrive better or worfe on blighted than on healthy straw. That blighted ftraw, retaining on it the fungi that have robbed the

corn

corn of its flour, has in it more nutritious matter than clean straw which has yielded a crop of plump grain, cannot bo doubted; the queftion is, whether this nutriment in the form of fungi does, or can be made to agree as well with the ftomachs of the animals that confume it, as it would do in that of straw and corn." Ib.

Perhaps there is another queftion:-whether the blighted ftraw, being with difficulty, and therefore imperfectly threfhed, does not retain in it more grain than clean and well-threshed straw.

We fhall now make an extract of great importance; and which (however juft may be the matter of it) will doubtlefs ftartle all common farmers.

"It cannot be improper in this place to remark, that although the feeds of wheat are rendered, by the exhaufting power of the fungus, fo lean and thrivelled, that scarce any flour fit for the manufacture of bread can be obtained by grinding them, these very feeds will, except perhaps in the very wort cafes, anfwer the purpose of feed corn as well as the fairest and plumpeft fample that can be obtained, and, in fome refpects, better; for, as a bufhel of much blighted corn will contain one-third at leaft more grains in number than a bushel of plump corn, three bushels of fuch corn will go as far in fowing land as four bufhels of large grain.

"The ufe of the flour of corn in furthering the process of vegetation is, to nourish the minute plant from the time of its developement till its roots are able to attract food from the manured earth; for this purpose, one-tenth of the contents of a grain of good wheat is more than fufficient. The quantity of flour in wheat has been increafed by culture and management, calculated to improve its qualities for the benefit of mankind, in the fame proportion as the pulp of apples and pears has been increased, by the fame means, above what is found on the wildings and crabs in the hedges.

"It is cuftomary to fet afide, or to purchase for feed corn, the boldeft and plumpeft famples that can be obtained, that is, those that contain the most flour; but this is unneceffary waste of human subsistence; the fmalleft grains, fuch as are fifted out before the wheat is carried to market, and either confumed in the farmer's family, or given to his poultry, will be found by experience to answer the purpofe of propagating the fort from whence they fprung, as effectually as the largeit." Ib.

It cannot be doubted, that this tract will occafion a very careful examination of the appearances which the crop now

"Eighty grains of the moft blighted wheat of the last year that could be obtained were fown in pots in the hot-house; of these, seventy two produced healthy plants, a lofs of 10 per cent. only."

growing