ART. IX. A Short Account of the Caufe of the Difeafe in Corn, called by Farmers the Blight, the Mildew, and the Ruft. By Sir Jofeph Banks, Bart. London: Harding: 1805.

WE E are induced to call the attention of our readers to this lit tle tract, from the importance of the subject, and the value of the hints which it throws out, as well as the refpect due to every thing that bears a name fo deservedly celebrated, both among the lovers of fcience, and the patrons of the most useful We believe we participate in a very univerfal feeling, when we exprefs our regret that fo few occafions fhould offer of noticing fimilar communications from the fame quarter.

arts.

The ravages which the blight made in last year's crop directed Sir Jofeph Banks's attention to the nature of that disease. The general ignorance of agriculturists upon the fubject, seemed to fuggeft the propriety of a popular effay, which might indicate' what naturalifts have afcertained refpecting it; and his own extenfive experience in both capacities enabled him better than any body else to perform this useful task. He has enriched his treatife with a number of original remarks and important fuggeftions for further experiments, which his long and intimate acquaintance with the fubject pointed out to him. It is neatly and unaffectedly compofed; and the opinions which it delivers are marked by a union, as rare as it is natural, of modesty and found sense.

All perfect plants, our author obferves, are provided by nature with mouths or pores on the furface of their leaves and stalks. Thefe are deftined to fupply the vegetable's want of locomotion, by enabling it to profit by all the aqueous particles which may fall upon it, or be contained in the air which surrounds it. They are opening in wet, and shut in dry weather; and greedily abforb the moisture that comes in contact with them. The furface of straw is covered with alternate stripes; the one fet more folidthe other filled with the mouths just now described. Into these the farina of a fmall parafitic fungus frequently penetrates; there it sprouts; and though its roots have not yet been detected beyond the bark, there can be no doubt that they push themfelves into the cellular texture, and, intercepting the fap in its afcent, nourish the little mushroom at the expence of the grain. It is the kernel of the primary plant which fuffers by this intrusion; in proportion to the number of fungi which take root in the stalk, the grain in the ear is fhrivelled; and while the bran remains as plentiful as before, the flour is fo much diminished, that our author afferts fome of the last year's crop did not yield a ftone from a fack of wheat; or it may happen that the whole produce, if ground, fhould give bran alone. This fungus attacks corn early

in fpring; affumes an orange colour, which afterwards becomes deep brown; and, in hot weather, ripens and fheds its feed perhaps in the space of a week. Spring corn fuffers lefs from it than winter, probably because the fungus has lefs time to spread over and exhauft it. It does not feem peculiar to this country. All over Europe, where corn is grown, the blight is known; and fpecimens of a parafitic plant, nearly refembling the English, have lately been received in wheat from New South Wales. Nor does this fungus appear to attack corn plants only. The neighbourhood of a barberry bufh will infect a whole diftrict of grain with the disease, from whence our author very reasonably infers, that this tree, known to be very fubject to a rust resembling the blight, fheds the farina of its fungus, which the wind carries to the pores of the corn.

Early in the feason, the ruft, in its orange-coloured stage, may be observed upon a few stalks here and there in a field. At this period it takes many weeks of coming to maturity; and that interval our author advises the farmer to employ in eradicating those infected plants, which, if permitted to ripen, are so many nests of numberless fungi. Each pore may contain from twenty to forty, and each fungus fheds a hundred feed; fo that, in the hot season, when they ripen quickly, a single stalk may infect a whole parish. He fufpects it may likewife find its way in the ftraw, mixed up with manure; and feveral graffes are obvioufly fubject to it. The former caufe is eafily removed; and careful weeding is a certain preventive of the latter.

Our author concludes his tract by two fuggeftions of very great practical importance. The firft is a query, whether the copious growth of thefe fungi upon the leaves and ftalks of corn does not add to the nutritive matter of the ftraw? The weight of the ftraw is certainly increased in proportion as the grain loses by the growth of the parafitical plant; but the question is fubmitted to farmers, whether the fungus has the qualities which adapt it to the ftomachs of cattle?--A queftion which may easily be answered by the experience of last year's feeding from the straw crop.

The other fuggeftion is of ftill greater moment, and we shall give it in Sir Jofeph's own words:

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 fhrivelled 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 worst cases *, anfwer the purpose of feed corn, as well

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*80 grains of the moft blighted wheat of the laft year, that could be obtained, were fown in pots in the hothoufe; of these, seventy-two produced healthy plants, a lofs of 10 per cent. only.

well as the fairest and plumpeft fample that can be obtained, and in some respects better; for, as a bufhel of much blighted cora will contain one third at least more grains in number than a bufhel 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 procefs 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 increased 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 boldest and plumpeft famples that can be obtained; that is, thofe that contain the most flour. But this is an unneceffary wafte of human fubfiftence; 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 purpose of propa gating the fort from whence they fprung, as effectually as the largest.

• Every ear of wheat is compofed of a number of cups placed alternately on each fide of the ftraw; the lower ones contain, according to circumftances, three or four grains, nearly equal in fize, but, towards the top of the ear, where the quantity of nutriment is diminished by the more ample supply of thofe cups that are nearer the root, the third or fourth grain in a cup is frequently defrauded of its proportion, and becomes fhrivelled and fmall. These small grains, which are rejected by the miller, because they do not contain flour enough for his purpose, have nevertheless an ample abundance for all purposes of vegetation, and as fully partake of the fap (or blood, as we fhould call it in animals) of the kind which produced them, as the fairest and fullest grain that can be obtained from the bottoms of the lower cups, by the wafteful procefs of beating the fheaves.' p. 25-26-27-28.

A good deal of illiberal attack has been excited by these most important fuggeflions, mingled with fome unneceffary violence, and very much mifplaced farcafm. Certain practical men have treated the idea of feeding cattle with the ruft of the ftraw as fomething equally abfurd in itself, with a propofal to grow fat by eating fcabby mutton. But it fhould be recollected, that the cafes are not at all parallel. The scab of mutton is an unwholefome concretion, not a new animal;-the ruft of corn is a new and thriving plant. Befides, there are certain morbid excrefcences in animals which we eat without fcruple, and, doubtless, receive nourishment from. What is the fat of prize cattle but a disease? Do we not feaft upon enlarged livers of geefe and turkeys? or, to take a cafe still more in point, Is not our atten

tion carefully directed, in many cafes, to the propagation of one plant upon the ftem and from the fap of another? There is evidently nothing in the fuppofition of Sir Jofeph Banks, which entitles it to be viewed as felf-contradictory; and it must be remembered, that he exprefsly ftates it as a subject of inquiry. As for the fuggeftion relative to feed corn, it is equally given as a hint deferving further examination. At the fame time, the author mentions the grounds of his own opinion, in fo far as he has adopted one. He has received very respectable teftimonies from practical men in the course of the difcuffion which his tract has excited; and, furely, to raife an outcry about the poffible danger that may refult from farmers being tempted to fow infufficient grain by his reprefentations, is, in the extreme, inconfiderate, as well as unfair. Can any doubt be entertained that the hint now given will be brought gradually to the test of experiment; and that a considerable portion of the crop will be rifked upon the authority of our author's views, only when experience shall have proved that they are correct? We trust that this decifive teftimony will foon be adduced, to the final determination of the question.

The plate which accompanies this valuable tract, is neatly engraved, after a defign by Bauer, botanical painter to the King; and exhibits an inftructive view of the Blight in its various ftates; that is, the fungus in the different ftages of its growth.

ART. X. Memoirs of C. M. Talleyrand de Perigord, &c. &c. Containing the Particulars of his Private and Public Life; of his Intrigues in Boudoirs, as well as in Cabinets. By the Author of the Revolutionary Plutarch. In two vol. London: 1805

W E have no reason for giving a place in our Journal to fuch a work as the prefent, if it were not that the name of Talleyrand might lead our readers to expect entertainment from profeffed memoirs of a perfon fo much heard of in the prefent agitations of the world. We think it proper, therefore, to warn them against certain disappointment and disgust; and we should be wanting to our duty, if we forbore to add, that fuch publications are a difgrace to those who offer them for sale, as well as to the purchafers by whom they are encouraged. The prefent is a very stupid and bafe libel, remarkable only for the author's wonderful ignorance of a life, the principal circumstances of which have been long notorious in this country, and feafoned for the depraved taste of vulgar readers by very fcandalous indecencies. There is pollution, indeed, upon the very title-page, by the lure which is offered to corrupt curiofity.

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We are very far from having contaminated our memory by reading much of these volumes. But from the errors that crowd every page upon which we looked, we will try to recollect a few, merely that our readers may be satisfied that this is not a work on which they are to rely for any information whatever.

The very beginning is a blunder. He is called the younger fon of a younger branch of the house of Perigord. We thought every body knew that he is the eldest fon. He is faid to have been born club-footed; but there is no mention of the well-known fact, that, on account of this deformity, he was deprived of his birthright. The compiler appears equally ignorant, that, for the fame fatisfactory reafon, Talleyrand was never fuffered to enjoy, even in infancy, the comforts of living in his father's family, under whofe roof he never flept; and that he was forced into the ecclefiaftical profeffion, in opposition to all his own wishes. Thefe anecdotes are the more fit to be noticed, because such irreparable injustice in early life cannot fail to give a bias to a strong charac

ter.

That the compiler may lose no time in indulging fuch as fhall be his readers, with what he appears to have chiefly intended for their gratification, we are told of this eftropié being immersed in all the outrage and exceffes of pleafure, at the age of fourteen. We are told the names of the very brothels, and the women who kept them. At the fame early age he makes him philosophize alfo, and even prophecy; for we are told, that after beating the watch and quarrelling with a moufquetaire, he swore, ftill at the age of fourteen,

That it fhould not be for want of his active endeavours and philofophical zeal, if, twenty-five years afterwards, Chriftian teachers and Christian pupils were still found in France, or if Christian churches were not changed into theatres, and Christian colleges into brothels. p. 6.

These twenty-five years make out precifely the year 1793. We confidently hope there is not a book-club in the whole of this credulous country, where such stuff will be read farther than this page.

It might have been well for fome parts of Europe, had Talleyrand been really fo idle and profligate at college; inftead of forming, in fullen and laborious referve, thofe talents which, it would feem, are not only become our terror, but make us inquifitive about his vices. He ftudied at the Sorbonne, at the fame time with Sieyes; and he was then remarked only as a filent and haughty young man, who paffed all his time among his books.

We shall permit one fpecimen of this compiler's abominations to be entered on our page, because its ludicrous defiance of all truth and fenfe faves it from any immoral effect. We are defired