PLANT DISEASES AND FUNGI.
19
amongst the cultivators of the soil in our islands, where the ravages
of fungoid disease are yet scarcely estimated at their true value.
Mildew, rust, smut, and bunt, have long been known to our
farmers; and although, perhaps, less destructive than abroad, yet
but little systematic effort has been made to combat these diseases.
In Australia the pest of corn rust has been regarded with so much
dismay that, in 1890, a conference of delegates was called to
consider the subject ; and on this occasion the chairman said 1 the
first fact which presents itself is the terrible loss that we are every
year subjected to. Sometimes two or three colonies have the rust
together; at other times one has the rust, and the others escape ; but
we are seldom free of it in one or other of the colonies. This last
season has been a particularly disastrous year, especially in South
Australia. The Minister says that he considers "the loss by rust
alone to be equal to £1,500,000 in that colony. Taking a loss of
five bushels less than what the crop would have been had there not
been rust, I estimate our loss in Victoria has been equal to that."
And again, further on, it is declared that "the total loss suffered by
the five colonies during the past season must have been not far short
of £2,500,000 sterling."
But corn crops are not by any means the only sufferers. It is
well known that apple cultivation is an important industry in the
United States, to an extent wholly unknown in this country, and yet
a terrible pest devastates the orchards, and inflicts grievous injury
upon the proprietors. The Commissioner of Agriculture reports
that "the distribution of the disease is co-extensive with the cultiva-
tion of the fruit which it attacks, although there may be a few
favoured localities in which it has not yet appeared. Throughout
the Eastern and Central States one is almost certain to find it in
every orchard, and on the Pacific slope, in California, it is also
frequent." We learn that in several States the extent of loss is said
to amount to fully one-half of the crop, while reports from other
States place the annual loss at from one-fourth to one-sixth of the
crop. The Secretary of the Illinois Horticultural Society estimates
the loss from this cause in his State at 20,000 bushels, which gives a
loss of 4,000 dollars per county, or about 400,000 dollars for
the whole State. In Missouri the loss is estimated at one-half
the crop. In Kansas the annual loss is placed, one year with
another, at one-fourth of the crop; and in Indiana it has been
1 "Report of the Conference," 1890, p. 6.