A Short Account of the Cause of the Disease in Corn, called by the Farmers the Blight, the Mildew, and the Rust [in] CURTIS: Practical Observations on the British Grasses

One of remarkably few works by Joseph Banks to have appeared in print. Despite his general pre-eminence in scientific and enlightenment London, and despite having been one of the most prolific correspondents known, Banks was remarkably shy of print and hardly anything was published over his name.

He had a particular interest in agricultural crops. He became alerted to the increasing problem of blight in wheat and corn in 1804 and, in the face of a devastating drop in the harvest that year, worked with Franz Bauer (Ferdinand Bauer's elder brother) in examining and recording specimens in an attempt to discover the means by which the disease was transmitted. "Blight" or "rust" in wheat and corn was a problem for farmers both in England and abroad, including Australia: 'The climate of the British Isles is not the only one that is liable to the Blight in Corn... Specimens received from the Colony of New South Wales shew that considerable mischief was done to the wheat crop there in the year 1803 by a parasitic plant, very similar to the English one' (p. 19).

Banks' treatise, which was 'intended to 'awake the energies of reason' among farmers and agriculturalists willing and able to study the day-to-day progress of their crops' (Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, p. 405), was issued in various forms, both separately and, as here, as a supplement to other works. Issued here with a separate title-page, it forms an adjunct to Curtis' Practical Observations on the British Grasses. This is the third edition of Curtis' work, but the first to include Banks' treatise.

The folding plate comprises eight figures after original drawings by Bauer, which were among the first he had achieved with the aid of a microscope.