1 88 The Scottish Naturalist. 



the spermatia to these, I could not determine. Nor could I 

 determine what effect was produced on the flies themselves. 

 Two artificially affected barley florets which stood inside in 

 pots, were visited constantly and persistently by the house fly, 

 and one of these dropt dead on the paper before me ; but 

 whether from Ergotism or old age, I could not tell. Ergot, in its 

 complete state, is also eaten by swarms of black ants and other 

 insects as it hangs on the grass. 



In the case of the rye artificially ergotised, although the 

 drops were immense and promised good spurs, all turned out 

 very small. Two artificial barley Ergots were of large size, and 

 one which showed the drop very largely merely destroyed the 

 seed without producing an Ergot at all. Perhaps the rye 

 Ergot may have been hindered in its growth by the withdrawal 

 of the fluid. 



The Ergot on each species of grass is of a peculiar shape. 

 The heavier spurs on rye weigh five grains, while those on Poa 

 pratensis do not weigh more than about the hundredth of a 

 grain. The heavier rye Ergots are ten times the weight of the 

 healthy seed ; but in some of the other grasses the Ergot is 

 from twenty to forty times the weight of the seed. In many 

 cases, however, the Ergot is little larger than the natural kernel. 



The structure of many grass florets and their mode of fertilisa- 

 tion render them specially liable to the floating spores of 

 Ergot. When a rye floret opens for fertilisation, the feathery 

 stigmas are thrown outside the pales on both sides, and are 

 seldom retracted ; while in many cases the pales remain open 

 to a certain extent after fertilisation has been effected. In 

 wheat, on the other hand, the flower cup is much wider ; the 

 feathers are seldom exposed outside, even when the flower 

 opens for fertilisation ; and they are, as a rule, retracted as the 

 flower shuts. The pales remain open only for twenty or thirty 

 minutes, and finally close, barring all doors against the flying 

 darts of the enemy. 



I have found the fungus growing naturally only upon the 

 Ergot of Glyceriafluitans and Holms mollis, but have succeeded 

 in producing it by cultivation from the Ergot of eleven species 

 of grasses. Whether all these fungi are to be classed as one 

 species, I will not venture to decide. But where many 

 hundreds on the Ergots of one kind of grass are seen growing 

 together — some a tenth of an inch in length of stem, some two 

 inches, some with a double head, some purple in colour, some 



