patients afflicted d'une gangrene sèche, noire et livide, which began at the toes and advanced more or less, being sometimes continued even to the thighs. He adds "he observed that this disease affected the men only; and that, in general, the females, except some very young girls, were free from it."

In the same paper is mentioned, as a fact well known to the Academy, the case of a peasant who lived near Blois. In this patient a gangrene, at its first attack, destroyed all the toes of one foot, then those of the other, afterwards the remaining parts of both feet; then the flesh of both his legs and that of his thighs rotted off successively, and left nothing but bare bones.

The members of the Academy were of opinion that the disease (of which M. Noël had sent an account) was produced by bad nourishment, particularly by bread in which there was a great quantity of ergot. This substance is described by M. Fagon, first physician to the king, and is said by him to be a kind of monster in vegetation, which a particular kind of rye sown in March is more apt to produce than what is sown in the autumn, and which often abounds in moist, cold countries and in wet seasons."

Professor J. S. Henslow, in commenting on the Mattishall case, in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, vol. ii., 1841, says there was no evidence that the presence of ergot was suspected in the wheat used, and although ergot is supposed seldom to attack wheat, yet Professor Henslow says that he had found it in 1841 in four different fields of wheat, and gathered more than a dozen specimens. Some of the Suffolk farmers were sufficiently acquainted with it to satisfy Professor Henslow that ergot was more common on wheat than was at that time commonly suspected. Upon asking his miller to search, he soon picked out about three dozen ergots from two bushels of revet wheat which had been sent to be ground at his mill, and he said that he had left at least as many more in the sample. This wheat was

grown in the next parish to Wattisham.

A very cursory

look into a sack of gleaned wheat then at the mill also furnished Professor Henslow with three or four more specimens.

From our own experience we should say that ergot in wheat is by no means uncommon, as we have generally found it on searching. Our examples have always been much smaller than the ergot of rye, and not much larger than a grain of wheat.

Our friend the Rev. Canon Du Port, M.A., of Mattishall, Suffolk, writing in the Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society, vol. iii. p. 199, says a considerable quantity of ergot was found among the marshland wheats in the year 1879, in which the summer was abnormally wet and sunless.

It unfortunately happens that ergot is extremely frequent on the common rye grass, Lolium perenne, L., a valuable grass, never absent from pasture-land and always present in permanent pastures. Professor Henry Tanner states, in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, No. xli., 1858, that he knew of a Shropshire breeder who lost £1200 in three years from the prevalence of ergot in his fields. Ergotised grass is especially damaging to animals at the time when the uterus is nearly ready to exclude its contents.

In some instances it is easy to sift ergot out of grain, as the ergots are larger in size than the seeds; but in other instances, as in wheat, the ergots are often so similar in size with the grain that hand picking is the only means that can be used. As ergots are generally black, there is no special difficulty in recognising them amongst seeds.

It is said that ergot is most abundant in ill-drained positions, and that good draining materially lessens it. When the grasses of pastures are ergotised it is well to pass a sharp scythe over the top of the grass and remove as far as possible the spikes, racemes, or panicles; and

this material, which is a common cause of abortion, should be raked together and placed out of the reach of the flocks and herds. In districts notoriously subject to ergot the scythe may be used in a similar manner at the flowering time of grasses, for as the spores of the Claviceps attack the young flowers, it is obvious that the ergots will be many or few according to the number of grass flowers.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WILSON'S VARIETY OF CLAVICEPS ON ERGOT.

Claviceps purpurea, Tul., var. Wilsoni, W.Sm.

No account of ergot would be complete without a description of a curious form of the germinating ergot of floating sweet grass, Glyceria fluitans, R.Br., observed by our friend Mr. A. Stephen Wilson near Aberdeen.

Glyceria fluitans, R.Br., is common in wet and muddy places and in stagnant pools and slow-running streams; and, in our opinion, the peculiar variety of Claviceps named Wilsoni entirely owes its origin to its peculiar environment, so different as it is from the environment of wheat, rye, and other cereals, and many grasses. Mr. A. S. Wilson, in July last, obligingly forwarded us a considerable number of germinated ergots of Glyceria fluitans, R.Br., on which the new and curious variety of Claviceps was growing, and from these examples the following notes and illustrations have been prepared.

Mr. Wilson detected these growths in July 1882 after a very wet spring and early summer. In July 1883 they were less common, and were intermixed with the normal purple form of the Claviceps described in Chapter XXVII. Sometimes the purple form as well as the new white or yellowish one was growing from the same ergot.

Four germinated ergots carrying Claviceps purpurea, Tul., var. Wilsoni, W.Sm., are engraved, natural size, at Fig. 107. This illustration may be compared with Fig. 100, where the normal form is illustrated, natural size. Two germinated ergots are enlarged five diameters at Fig. 108, for comparison with Fig. 101, A, where the

normal form is similarly enlarged. The variety differs from the typical form in being whitish or yellowish instead of pale purple in colour, and in the perithecia or

FIG. 107.

Claviceps purpurea, Tul., var. Wilsoni, W.Sm., growing from Ergot Natural size.

conceptacles being almost free on an elongated clublike growth instead of being immersed in a globular head or stroma. Many of the growths of the variety Wilsoni,

X-5

FIG. 108.

Claviceps purpurea, Tul., var. Wilsoni, W.Sm., growing from Ergot. Enlarged 5 diameters.

W.Sm., are hair-like, others are attenuated upwards from a thicker base and bear no perithecia. The whole growth is less firm than the type, and instantly reminds one of an ab