Wilt

in agriculture, a fungus that attacks field crops, as cotton, cowpeas, but particularly the growing flax plant. Flax wilt is prevalent the world over, and where-ever flax is an important crop is a serious menace to the farmer. The fungus lives on the flax plant, but it persists in the ground for several years after a crop has been removed. Soil infected with the wilt is said to be flax-sick. The wilt attacks the young flax plant as soon as the seed has sprouted. Many of the plants are killed before they open their leaves; others struggle up to a height of a few inches, then take on a sickly yellowish hue and wilt at the top, whence the name. The plants that attain full height before they are attacked dry up and break off at the surface of the ground. The roots of an affected plant have a peculiar dry, ashy look.

The wilt, like other fungi, however minute, produces spores which cling to the seed of the flax, and transmit the pest from field to field. In the case of fresh land not infected by wilt the farmer is able to prevent the introduction of the pest by spraying his seed. One pint of formaline to forty gallons of water is sufficient to spray one hundred bushels of seed. The seed may be spread on a floor and sprayed. It should be shoveled over and over to prevent the flat flax seeds from sticking together, and to make sure that each seed has been moistened by the spray.

The North Dakota Experiment Station has carried out a series of tests proving that treated seed sowed in clean land is not subject to wilt. Professor Henry L. Bolley has won no little reputation in this work. The method followed is simple. Professor Bolley sowed the seed of an ordinary variety of flax in "flax-sick" soil, that is to say, in soil infected with the wilt fungi. As might be expected, nearly all the plants succumbed to the wilt; but he saved the seed of the few plants that survived and planted it the following season in flax-sick soil again. By repeating this process season after season the experimenter found that a larger and larger share of the flax seeds survived, blossomed, and produced seed. By continuing the experiment Professor Bolley has produced a wilt-resisting variety of value to the farmer. He is hopeful that the station may succeed in developing a strain of flax that will prove entirely immune to the wilt.

The efforts that have been made to counteract flax wilt are illustrations of the spirit of scientific inquiry that prevades every department of agriculture and is converting farming into an occupation requiring a high degree of intelligence to make the business a success.