Page:Husbandman and Housewife 1820.djvu/159

 The following receipt is likewise from the same author. Dissolve three ounces of blue vitriol in three English gallons of water (wine measure) for every three bushels of grain to be prepared. Let the liquid be put into a vessel capable of holding from sixty to eighty gallons, in such a quantity, that when three or four Winchester bushels of wheat shall be poured into the prepared liquor, it will rise five or six inches above the corn. The grain should be frequently stirred, and all that swims on the surface carefully removed. After the wheat has remained half an hour in the preparation it should be taken out of the vessel, and thrown into a basket, which shall allow the water but not the grain to escape. It should then be immediately washed in rain, or pure water, which prevents any risk of its injuring the grain. The seed ought afterwards to be dried, either with or without lime, before it is sown. It is proper to observe that the grain should not be put into the prepared liquor, unless it has been well dressed, and is thoroughly dry. It may be kept without injury.

The following miscellaneous particulars respecting smut, and the means of preventing it merit attention. 1. The same water should never be used but once in washing wheat; even when brine is employed, it is safest to have fresh liquor to each parcel. 2. Lime is not only of service to dry the seed, but by its caustic and antiseptic qualities, it tends to destroy putridity, and animalculæ of every description. 3. If smutty grain is not threshed till the June or July succeeding the year it was reaped, the dust, it is said will become too volatile to attach itself to the grain when threshed, particularly by a mill; nor is old seed wheat so liable to occasion smut, which by age loses the power of reproduction. 4. Notwithstanding the violence of threshing mills they do not bruise the smut balls so much as the flail. 5. Great care must be taken, not to thresh wheat on a floor where smutty wheat has been