Our own experiments, however, recorded in the “Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society” for 1856, led us to conclude that the success derived from pickling wheat in different caustic and corrosive solutions arose from the fact of diseased grain being destroyed in the process; and we extract the following record of experiments made in 1853, as explaining this view of the matter. Four plots of wheat, all from the same sample, were sown in the following order:— 1. 2. 3. 4. +---------------++---------------++---------------++---------------+ | Much diseased || Much diseased;||Perfect picked || Perfect picked| | wheat, || treated with || seed, || seed, with | |without pickle.|| sulphate of ||without pickle.|| sulphate of | | || copper. || || copper. | +---------------++---------------++---------------++---------------+ The results of these were as under:— Plot 1. Most of the seed germinated, but the crop was much blighted, both in straw and grain; in fact, scarcely a perfect ear of the latter. Plot 2. A small quantity of the seed germinated; the few resulting ears were free from blight. Plot 3. Germinated, with a good and clean resulting crop. Plot 4. The same result as Plot 3. These experiments seemed to show that the pickling of wheat destroys the seed, so as to prevent germination when the seed is diseased or ill-formed; but if perfect seed be always employed, no pickling at all is necessary, it being strictly true that a diseased progeny must result from an imperfect stock in plants no less than in animals. We have said that bunt is not peculiar to any climate; we have, however, always observed that employing seed from a warm district on a cold one, or using the finer white wheats in cold, exposed, or ill-drained situations, is sure to produce a large quantity of this fungus. Autumn-sown wheat, too, is less liable to the infection than spring wheat, which we attribute to the fact that many of the weaker plants will succumb to the cold rain and frost.