The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-11-20
The Cause of Smut in Wheat,

The Cause of Smut in Wheat.
This is the season for sowing wheat
in the south, and every one who at
tempts to raise Il bushel of this grain
should know how to prevent the growth
of smut, which is foul and blighting
parasite. We regret to see a mistake
made by Mr.. Lynch Turner, chairman
of committee of the Pulaski grange
in this state, appointed TO examine
into the cause of smut in wheat, having
a wide circulation in agricultural papers
as Il matter Of fact to he relied on by
farmers. The report of this committee
was first published in the Rural Sun,
with editorial Endorsement. The mate
rial part of the report is copied into the
Rural New Yorker which says: ''This
is an important subject, and one which
oranges, farm clubs and individual
farmers throughout the country should
investigate. This association of farm
ers recently becoming so popular and
successful, inaugurates a new era in
the progress of American agriculture, ;,
etc.
The error into which half dozen
agricultural papers have been led, and
the Pulaski grange committee in the
first start of this nominal investigation,
has its origin in the fact that all these
intelligent and respectable writer's for
the press entirely overlook the careful
observations and studies of men of
science, aided by microscopes applied
to the investigation of parasites on
wheat during the last two hundred
years. This is one among thousand
cases where book knowledge has great
value to the farmer to prevent serious
mistakes. Not to do Mr.. Turner a
seeming injustice, we copy from his
published report as follows:
"This is a small, brownish bug,
about the size of a buffalo gnat, which
makes its appearance soon after harvest
times, and deposits its eggs in the cleft
of the wheat grain. These eggs are,
of course, sown with wheat in the fall
and when termination takes place
these eggs are, of course, sown with
the wheat in the fall, and when germ.
nation takes place these eggs are en-
veloped in the plume and carried
upward in the future growth of the
stem until, perhaps, the latter part OF
May, when those conditions favorable
to insect life obtain, and the Larvae are
Matched, and may be found in one OF
more of the lower joints of the stem
rarely above the second from the top.
At harvest time, they may be seen
with the naked eye"
No one has shown that the eggs OF
insects circulate in the microscopic sap
vessels of wheat and other plants, nor
through the smaller pores in the cells
of plants. Animals and plants live on
wheat simultaneously; but smut-bug
no more produces smut than children
that eat wheat wheat bread. All see
the absurdity of saying that the life in
a horse can produce the life in an ear
of corn, making an animal the father
and mother of well-known grain.
But the black mass of smut that often
grows on the seeds and stalks of corn,
and in the seeds of wheat, oats and
barley, is as much plant as any cereal
can be, and like cereals has germs de-
rived from parents, which reappear in
offspring, descending like the vitality
in man himself from one generation to
another. Two species of smut-fungi
are propagated by slovenly farmers in
the seeds of wheat-one, the uedo
segetum and the other Mredo tetida. The
spores of these parasites are killed by
washing seed wheat in strong brine,
and letting it lie in brine an hour.
Should it remain in brine too long it
will destroy the life of the wheat and
render the seed valueless. Nothing is
easier than to infect clean wheat with
smut, and raise infected plants, with
no bugs or other insects near the
plants. Thousands of experiments of
this kind have been tried. In 1916
Gen. Hammond, distinguished red
wheat grower in the town of Wheat
land, New York, showed the writer a
head of smut wheat with small live
bugs in the seeds, like bugs in English
peas. He claimed that the bugs
caused the smut. We made plenty
of smut with the bugs left out from his
seed. Take a sack in which smutty
wheat has been handled, and put into
it quart of as pure wheat, washed in
bluestone, chamberlie, or whatever
else you please, that does not kill the
germs in the grain, having the salts to
kill the smut, washed off, and the sec
ond infection from the sack will be
perfect, and the harvest a crop of smut
as well as one of wheat, when the
quart of seed has been sown in the
usual way Nothing is easier than to
raise a crop of cookie, a chrop of cheat
and crop of smut by planting the
seed. The parasites known by the
names of rust and mildew are not 81
easily prevented; they are, however
blights that belong to the same class o.
enemies. Draining swamps and clear
culture tend to dry the atmosphere
and keep at a distance those micro
scopic cells and germs that produce
malarial diseases in man and his do
nestle animals, and very similar mai
aides in all plants whose seeds ant
fruits form human flood, and that o
cattle.
Potatoes for Horses.