288 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
from the mildew. He scarcely knows such a distemper from
any injury it does his crops, not even in 1804. To the same cause
may be attributed the certainty of the turnip crop.
On the very strong tenacious brown clays of Great Wigborough,
they are very little subject to the mildew, except in accidentally
thin crops.
The Rev. Mr. Raymond, at Belchamp-hall, has two fields
so subject to the mildew, that wheat has not been sown in
them for many years : it is strong land, but sound ; he has
had turnips in them.
Mr. Wright has found, that if wheat be sown late at Rochford-
hall, it is very subject to mildew, whatever the year may be
generally as to that distemper.
SMUT.
Last year Mr. Pollet, of Bardfield-lodge, sowed old wheat
as a guard against the smut, without brining, etc., but it did not
answer, for there were many bladders in the crop.
Mr. Ketcher has tried every way of dressing wheat seed,
and has steeped it twenty-four hours in sea-water ; yet some
bladders would be found in his crops.
Mr. Sanxter, of Bradwell, sowed smutty wheat ; he was
advised by Mr. Willes, if he would do it, to steep in sea-water
twenty-four hours ; he sowed eight acres thus, and the crop was
clean : some he sowed with only wetting, which was very smutty :
the rest he sowed dry, and it was nothing else but bladders. Mr.
Andrews in general steeps twelve hours, and his crops clean."
The English Flora of Sir James Edward Smith was the first
British systematic work to contain a volume devoted entirely to
fungi. Smith did not live to see the completion of the flora, as he
died on the day he received the last sheet of the fourth volume
from his printer.3 The work was continued by Sir W. J.
Hooker. The Fungi are described by Berkeley (1836). It was
at first arranged that he should prepare "the descriptions of the
"Agarics and some allied Genera" ; he undertook the whole
and produced a volume (1836) which established his reputation
as the foremost mycologist of this country, a reputation he held
unassailed until his death in 1889.
3 The first volume was published in 1824, the fourth in 1828. The letter from B. M. Forster
over twenty years previously gives some corroboration of Smith's remark that he had been
"long accustomed to their (i.e., Cryptogamia) contemplation in the wild scenes of nature."