MR. HOPE, FENTON BARNS, ON PICKLING WHEAT.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 167, 20 April 1871, Page 7

MR. HOPE, FENTON B ARNS, ON PICKLING WHEAT.

At the present season, the remarks of an agriculturist whose name is so widely known as Mr. Hope's, will be read with great interest. We have recently noticed, in contemporary journals, questions, asked as to the best way of preventing smut in wheat. Mr. Hope's statement, as undernoted, will help them to a conclusion.

" I have long thought that ball smut is a fungus propagated by adhering to the seed, and unless this fungus is destroyed before being sown, all the grains infected by it are sure to produce diseased ears. I must here remark that smut is of two kinds. In one of them the smut or black powder flies or wastes away, before the sound wheat becomes ripe, while in the ether the powder is enclosed in a skin frequently strong enough to remain unbroken when passing through the threshing machine. The larger number of balls, however, do get broken, the powder discolouring the sample, giving it a disagreeable smell and a peculiar oily feeling, which judges know at once. It is this variety which is destroyed by pickling. Tiie other appears to be propagated in some other way, at least as yet no remedy has been found for checking it. Many years ago, I rubbed smut balls amongst clean wheat, then pickled part, and sowed both. The result was, tho pickled seed produced a healthy crop, while of the unpickled portion there was hardly one sound ear. I have again and again seen the sowing of fields finished with uupickled seed, tell to the spot where the dressed and undressed seed met. Old wheat should not be pickled, as its vitality is sometimes totally destroyed by it, and the fungus itself' seems incapa'ue of growth when upwards of twelve months old. I am far from saying that ball invariably follows, when undressed wheat is used for seed, a' , l>y a careful selection of seed, this may be avoided for years. But the little trouble aud expense saved by not pickling the seed is trifling indeed in comparison to the security given. I have triad pickling barley for blackheads, where the powder blows off before the grain is ripe, but as in wheat, without success. Still, 1 think, it is worthy of further trial, as it has appeared to me for the last two or three years, that many of the blackheads in both oats and barley are more nearly allied than formerly to the true ball in wheat. I should like to see experiments made by steeping grain different lengths of time in sea-water, or in water salted to the strength of swimming an egg,