is to be put when we recommend him as to his soundness. I made that point more to illustrate certain types. For instance, take a horse weighing 1300 pounds, a big, heavy, flat-footed horse, even if there was not any deviation from the right condition, I could not recommend that animal as a sound animal for light driving, because his very shape and his heavy frame unfit him for it, and those would be the very elements which would produce disease.

Dr. BARBER. Could a horse quite considerably knee-sprung be recommended under any circumstances as a sound horse? Dr. GARDNER. No, sir.

Hon. W. D. BREWSTER. There is one question in connection with the horse which causes considerable trouble in this State. We do not have what are called mortgages of personal property in this State except in certain exceptional cases, but in Massachusetts and New York they have, and some years ago (and I presume the law is the same now) horses brought into this State, which a Connecticut man would feel he could buy with perfect safety, were found to have been mortgaged in New York or Massachusetts, and our courts have recognized such mortgages as valid. This is a question which, considering the great amount of this class of property that we have in this State, ought to be brought into any discussion of this subject. I have not had any experience in that line for many years, but I remember a case in a town in Tolland County where a man bought a horse which was mortgaged in New York State and two law suits were the result. I believe in that case the purchaser was finally victorious because of some informality in the bill of sale.

Mr. LEE of Coventry. Speaking of cribbing, by what other name is it known?

Dr. GARDNER. Usually it passes by that name alone, but cribbing, biting, and wind-sucking are vices of the same character.

Mr. LEE.

What is the distinction between them?

Mr. GARDNER. Only in the way in which the animal achieves the result which he is after.

Mr. LEE. Which is considered the worst vice or disease? Dr. GARDNER. They are about on par. There is not much difference.

Mr. LEE. I never learn anything except by experience. A while ago I bought a horse which was recommended as a sound horse and after getting him into my stable and admiring him for a few minutes I discovered that he was a windsucker, and I got rid of him in twenty-four hours. I would like to give my friends privately the fun of that experience, but I will not take the time of the Convention. I did not get any warranty, did not ask any. I noticed that the lecturer advised us never to buy a horse without a warranty, and never to give one when we sold a horse.

Dr. GARDNER. The object of that was to impress the idea that a man should be extremely cautious in giving a warranty not to place anything in it which he cannot make good. If a man recommends an animal as sound, the courts say that he holds the animal out as not having about him any disease whatever. That covers over large ground and the man is warranting a good deal. He should be extremely cautious in doing so. I will say that it is never a safe plan to deal with parties who are not responsible. It is always an easy matter to go to some dealer who is a responsible party and has property enough to protect you in case the horse turns out to be other than he was recommended.

Mr. LEE. I don't see how we can get a horse without some risk.

Mr. LEE. I tried it and I am free to admit that I did not succeed. I have dealt with both classes. One was the proverbial church horse-dealer. I thought I couldn't be cheated then, but I have paid for repairing all my wagons since then. Adjourned to 2 o'clock.

AFTERNOON SESSION.

The Convention met at 2 o'clock, Vice-President DAY in the chair.

Sec. GOLD. Before we proceed to the regular lecture on the programme I shall be excused for presenting a brief letter which I have just received from an old friend whom you will recognize, and it is as much for you as for myself,

T. S. GOLD, Esq.:

WATERBURY, Dec. 4, 1888.

DEAR SIR,- Thanks for your very kind remembrance in sending your Agricultural papers. You know the reasons why I am not a practical farmer. I have always taken great interest in farming, and enjoyed much in seeing the products in this and in foreign countries. I never saw finer fat bullocks, sheep, and hogs, in Chicago, than the many droves I saw pass through Dublin the year I was there, going to Liverpool and London to pay for rent. I never saw a finer country for agriculture than Ireland, not even Herkimer County, N. Y. In the hands of New England Yankees it would be the garden of the world. I saw much of it. It is all it can be under present circumstances.

I am reminded of your dear father and mother when I first knew them in Goshen. I think it was seventy years ago. Forty-five years since I spent a night on Cream Hill, on my way to visit a brother in Illinois. Then your father had a school-house full of New York boys.

By the mercy of my Heavenly Father, I am in the enjoyment of good health, and if I live until the 14th, it will be my 94th birthday. I am fully aware there can be but few days in store for me, and I am admonished to be ready for the Master's call, which is near at hand. Wishing you, Mrs. Gold, and family, many years of health and happiness, and with much esteem,

Truly yours, ISRAEL COE.

The quartette again favored the audience with a song, after which the Chairman introduced as the lecturer of the afternoon, Dr. ROLAND THAXTER.

INJURIOUS FUNGI.

BY Dr. ROLAND THAXTER, OF NEW HAVEN.

Although I have given the title "Injurious Fungi" to what I wish to say this afternoon, it is my intention to be somewhat general in my remarks, endeavoring rather to give some idea of what injurious fungi really are, than with the object of taking up any one disease or group of diseases originating from this cause. I do this for the reason that I find in talking with farmers on the subject, that the ideas prevalent concerning these organisms and their results, as we see them. manifested in the form of mildews, rusts, smuts and the like, are none too clear even among good observers. It is perhaps natural that, in the minds of the majority of persons who observe such things at all, a certain degree of mystery should be attached to organisms, whose every-day life is something which cannot be studied without a practised eye and hand aided by a powerful microscope. This idea is, moreover, strengthened from the fact that the presence of noxious fungi is so often manifested rather by the results which they produce than by any visible appearance of the fungus itself. At best, when anything does appear, we have merely a little black powder which we call smut, or a very little reddish dust which we call rust, or something even less tangible than these, as the visible agent or product of the disease; and to the general observer this might as well be so much dirt, as far as any idea it gives him of what it really is or how it originated. In all cases, too, we do not have as evident productof disease as are shown in smuts, rusts, and the like. In the large group of diseases which may be loosely designated by the general term of blights, we may have no such visible product or one visible only to a practised eye.

It is thus not surprising that the nature of such diseases in general should be very commonly misapprehended, and also that much injury caused by fungi should be erroneously attributed by farmers to drought, sun scald, and similar causes which, in a majority of cases, have nothing whatever to do with the observed condition.

It is well-known that certain crops in certain localities are often heavy sufferers through the attack of smuts, mildews, and their like, and the importance of looking into these diseases with

a view to their mitigation or prevention is thoroughly well understood in the sections where they are prevalent. The onion smut, for example, forms a distinctly important item in the yearly reckoning of farmers in the great onion districts of Connecticut, since, when once introduced, it destroys a yearly percentage of the crop, a percentage, moreover, which in a given field increases yearly until it renders the further cultivation of onions unprofit able. In the case of onion smut the germs of the disease persist in the ground for so long a time after onions have been grown upon it that it is useless to repeat the crop for a period of years. This onion smut is one of the most vexatious forms of fungus disease, from its tenacity of life, and thus far no successful remedy against it has been suggested. When diseases like the onion smut have once gained a foothold in any locality, they have come to remain and are not likely to disappear until some way of successfully combatting them is found. But there are other diseases which are somewhat different in their mode of appearance. Their advent may be sudden and unexpected, and often, after having done widespread injury to crops, they may disappear as rapidly as they came. Such diseases follow a course not unlike epidemics among men and animals which are now largely attributed to similar agencies, namely, Bacteria or germs as they are popularly called, and are analogous in a way to the plagues of noxious insects which are constantly making their appearance in different sections of the country. Certain conditions, perhaps of climate or surroundings, favor their multiplication to an enormous degree, although ordinarily they may be comparatively harmless.

The so called rot of potatoes furnishes an illustration of a disease of this nature. The rot is due to the attack of a peculiar fungus which is of more or less common yearly occurrence, and usually shows itself about the first of August in the form of a grayish bloom on the potato leaves, which become curled and blackened, while the penetration of the fungus through the stems to the tubers subsequently causes them to rot to a greater or less extent. . As I have said, this fungus occurs every year in greater or less abundance, but under certain conditions it sometimes develops such virulence as to destroy the crop almost entirely, as it did for example in Ireland and elsewhere in 1842 and 1845.

It is quite unnecessary for me to go over the long list of diseases due to fungi which every farmer may make up from his own expe