Page:Husbandman and Housewife 1820.djvu/117

 of a blunt horn, as far as the finger will easily reach. Into this a piece of leather made very thin and round shaped is introduced, about the size of a crown piece, having a large hole in the middle of it. Previous to introducing the leather, it is covered with lint or tow, and dipped in the same digestive ointment. Also a pledgit of tow, dipped in the same ointment, is put in the same orifice, to keep out the cold air.

, or in.

THIS disease is occasioned by a minute parasitic fungus or mushroom on the leaves, stems, and glumes or chaff of the living plant. The roots of the fungus, intercepting the sap, intended by nature for the nutriment of the grain, render it lean and shrivelled, and in some cases rob it completely of its flour; and the straw becomes black and rotten, unfit for fodder.

The same fungus is generated on many other vegetable substances besides wheatwheat. [sic] Those receiving the infection at different seasons of the year, form, as it were, conductors from one to the other, in which fungi germinate effloresce, disseminate and die, during the revolutions of the seasons. The fungus having arrived at maturity in the spring on a few shrubs bushes or plants, its seeds are taken up the next humid atmosphere, (hence the erroneous idea that the rust or mildew is caused by the fog alone) wafted into the adjoining fields, and the nearest wheat is sure to suffer the most from it. In damp weather also, its seed is more immediately received into the leaves of trees and shrubs, or into their barks and fruits, or the stems of plants, through the medium of those valves or mouths, with which nature has supplied them, for the admission of moisture.