Abstract
RUST, or mildew, is familiar to the agriculturist as a disease destructive to wheat and other cereals, and to the botanist as the subject of important researches relating to fungi. It was known in times of antiquity, as shown by numerous references indicating its destructiveness. Virgil says, “Soon, too, the corn gat sorrow's increase, that an evil blight ate up the stalks”(“Georgics,” i. 150–1), In Britain, it is stated that “mildew of wheat-plants has been known for over 300 years, according to the records” (“Report on Mildew on Wheat Plants, 1892,” Board of Agriculture, 1893, p. 25). Shakespeare ascribes it to “the foul fiend Flibbergibbet” (King Lear, Act iii. Scene 4). The works on husbandry of Hartlib (1655) and Jethro Tull (1731) refer to it. The connection of rust of cereals with a specific fungus is generally ascribed to Fontana (1767), and Persoon, after further investigation, in 1797 named the fungus Puccinia graminis. An account of rust, with illustrations of the Puccinia, by Sir J. Banks in 1805, is apparently the first important paper on the rust and its fungus in Britain. Since then the epidemic has been the subject of many papers, and of, at least, three organised inquiries. The historical side of the subject is conveniently summarised by Worthington G. Smith (“Diseases of Crops,” London, 1884, Chapter xxv.), by C. B. Plowright (“British Uredinese and Ustilagineæ,” London, 1889, p. 46), and in the Board of Agriculture report (“Report on Mildew on Wheat Plants, 1892,” Board of Agriculture, 1893, P. 25).
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References
J. Eriksson : Ber. d. deutsch. botan. Gess., 1894, p. 292; 1897, p. 183. Jahrbuch f. wiss. Botanik, xxix. 1896. Botan. Centralblatt, lxxii. 1897, pp. 321–5 and 354–62. Centralblatt f. Bakter. u. Parasitenknnde, Abt. ii. 1897, pp. 291–308.
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SMITH, W. Recent Investigations on Rust of Wheat . Nature 62, 352–356 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/062352b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/062352b0