have driven mankind, and all the larger animals, from the face of the earth.

6

"Though all old persons, who have concerned themselves in agriculture, remember the blight in corn many years, yet some have supposed that, of late years, it has materially increased; this, however, does not seem to be the case. Tull, in his Horse-hoeing Husbandry, p. 74, tells us, that the year 1725 was a year of blight, the like of which was never before heard of, and which he hopes may never happen again ;' yet the average price of wheat in the year 1726, when the harvest of 1725 was at market, was only 36s. 4d. and the average of the five years of which it makes the first, 37s. 7d. 1797 was also a year of great blight; the price of wheat in 1798 was 49s. 1d. and the average of the five years, from 1795 to 1799, 63s. 5d. *

"The climate of the British Isles is not the only one that is liable to the blight in corn; it happens occasionally in every part of Europe, and probably in all countries where corn is grown. Italy is very subject to it, and the last harvest of Sicily has been materially hurt by it. Specimens received from the colony of New South Wales, show that considerable mischief was done to the wheat crop there, in the year 1803, by a parasitic plant, very similar to the English one.

"It has been long admitted by farmers, though scarcely credited by botanists, that wheat in the neighbourhood of a barberry bush seldom escapes the blight. The village of Rollesby in Norfolk, where barberries abound, and wheat seldom succeeds, is called by the opprobrious appellation of Mildew Rollesby. Some observing men have of late attributed this very perplexing effect to the farina of the flowers of the bar

* The scarcity of the year 1801, was in part occasioned by a mildew, which, in many places, is said to have attacked the plants of wheat on the S. E. side only, but was principally owing to the very wet harvest of 1800; the deficiency of wheat at that harvest, was found, on a very accurate calculation, somewhat to exceed onefourth; but wheat was not the only grain that failed; all others, and potatoes also, were materially deficient. This year the wheat is probably somewhat more damaged than it was in 1800, and barley somewhat less than an average crop, every other article of agricultural food is abundant, and potatoes one of the largest crops that has been known; but for these blessings on the labour of man, wheat must

berry, which is, in truth, yellow, and resembles in some degree the appearance of the rust, or what is presumed to be the blight in its early state.

"It is, however, notorious to all botanical observers, that the leaves of the barberry are very subject to the attack of a yellow parasitic fungus, larger, but otherwise resembling, the rust in corn.

"Is it not more than possible, that the parasitic fungus of the barberry and that of wheat are one and the same species, and that the seed transferred from the barberry to the corn, is one cause of the disease? Misseltoe, the parasitic plant with which we are the best acquainted, delights most to grow on the apple and hawthorn, but it flourishes occasionally on trees widely differing in their nature from both of these: in the Home Park, at Windsor, misseltoe may be seen in abundance on the lime-trees planted there in avenues; as likewise at Cobham Hall, near Gravesend, the seat of the Earl of Darnley; at Anchorwick, near Staines, it grows on the Carolina poplar. If this conjecture is well founded, another year will not pass without its being confirmed by the observations of inquisitive and sagacious farmers.

"It would be presumptuous to offer any remedy for a malady, the progress of which is so little understood; conjectures, however, founded on the origin here assigned to it, may be hazarded without offence.

*

It is believed to begin early in the spring, and first to appear on the leaves of wheat in the form of rust, or orangecoloured powder; at this season, the fungus will, in all probability, require as many weeks for its progress from infancy to puberty, as it does days during the heats of autumn; but a very few plants of wheat, thus infected, are quite sufficient, if the fungus is permitted to ripen its seed, to spread the malady over a field, or indeed over a whole parish.

"The chocolate-coloured blight is little observed till the

* This, though believed, is not dogmatically asserted; because Fontana, the best writer on the subject, asserts that the yellow and the dark-coloured blight are: different species of fungi.

corn is approaching very nearly to ripeness; it appears then in the field in spots, which increase very rapidly in size, and are, in calm weather, somewhat circular, as if the disease took its origin from a central position.

"May it not happen, then, that the fungus is brought into the field in a few stalks of infected straw, uncorrupted among the mass of dung laid in the ground at the time of sowing? It must be confessed, however, that the clover leys, on which no dung from the yard was used, were as much infected last autumn as the manured crops. The immense multiplication of the disease in the last season, seems, however, to account for this; as the air was, no doubt, frequently charged with seed for miles together, and deposited it indiscriminately on all sorts of crops.

"It cannot, however, be an expensive precaution to search diligently in the spring for young plants of wheat infected with the disease, and carefully to extirpate them, as well as all grasses, (for several are subject to this or a similar malady,) which have the appearance of orange-coloured or of black stripes on their leaves, or on their straw; and if experience shall prove, that straw can carry the disease with it into the field, it will cost the farmer but little precaution to prevent any mixture of fresh straw from being carried out with his rotten dung to the wheat-field."

LATE SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE; HONORARY MEMBER OF THE SOCIETIES OF DUBLIN, BATH, YORK, SALFORD, ODIHAM, SOUTH HANTS, KENT, ESSEX AND NORFOLK; THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY SOCIETIES OF MANCHESTER; THE VETERINARY COLLEGE OF LONDON; THE CORK INSTITUTION; THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF PRESTON; THE ECONOMICAL SOCIETY OF BERNE; THE PHYSICAL SOCIETY OF ZURICH; THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS; THE PALATINE ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURE AT MANHEIM; THE IMPERIAL ECONOMICAL SOCIETY ESTABLISHED AT FETERSBURGH; THE ROYAL AND ELECTORAL ECONOMICAL SOCIETY OF CELLI; A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURE FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SEINE; AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURE AT FLORENCE; OF THE PATRIOTIC SOCIETY OF MILAN, AND OF THE ECONOMICAL SOCIETY AT COPENHAGEN.

ARTHUR YOUNG, the subject of the present memoir, was a man whose life and labours were intimately connected with the agriculture of Great Britain. He was born September

Young, D. D. had been a prebendary of Canterbury, and rector of Bradfield, in that county. While in the commission of the peace, he became a very active magistrate, and appears to have been chaplain to the Right Honourable Arthur Onslow, at the time he presided in the chair of the House of Commons. Arthur, to whom the Speaker was god-father, after receiving a tolerably good education, had his fortune to seek; for the chief part of his father's income was professional, and of course became extinct at his death, which occurred in 1761. The youth was accordingly intended for business, and apprenticed to a wine-merchant, at Lynn, in Norfolk; but, alas! although he was not averse, at any period of his life, from a glass of generous liquor, yet this occupation did not prove congenial to his feelings. He was now residing in a county, recently improved by the introduction of turnip husbandry, and he could not look around him without beholding the manifold advantages arising out of the new system. So much was he smitten with the love of agriculture, that, when only twenty years of age, he bid adieu to all mercantile concerns, and determined to commence farmer on a small paternal estate, which had become the jointure of his mother. This was called Bradfield Hall, situate in the county of Suffolk, and he appears, on this occasion, to have formed a kind of joint-stock company with the rest of the family, as the profits were to be laid by, and divided for the good of all. But the subject of this memoir was too young, and too unsteady, to reap those common advantages usually derived from patient labour and industry, by those of a far inferior capacity. He delighted in experiments; he speculated on future crops; he overlooked immediate and obvious advantages; in fine, he forgot the past, neglected the present, and consoled himself with the future. Family disputes ensued, and all those ills that usually accompany unsuccessful efforts. At length his mother interposed, and this improvident young man (for so he appeared at this time to all) now found it necessary to remove from the paternal mansion. Yet, although nearly ruined in the pursuit, agriculture was still dear to him.