I took a fairly long look at the essay on how to get rid of corn smut; but I'm afraid I wasn't able to make much out of it. I'm not sure, though, whether it was the "old English" or just the writer's lack of a decent knife to keep his quill trimmed. I'm not sure I would trust the methods that appeared to be described as an "elimination" of the smut.

In light of recent articles on what a delicacy "corn smut" is, I was curious about whether it was recognized as a food in the writer's time. It would also be of interest to knew whether people in that era knew about the toxicity of barley smut - an altogether different thing than the ugly (but some say delicious) crud on the corn.

Similar infections of what appeared to be other "grain crops" were mentioned, but I couldn't identify what the "other crops" were.

John