218 SLUGS, FLUKES, EELWORMS, ETC. 



{Tylenchus devastatrix) to field Bean plants, the general 

 effect of the attack, so far as I have observed it, is to 

 cause a more or less stunted and deformed growth 

 in both the plants and the seed-pods. 



In a parcel of specimens sent, amongst which one: 

 healthy plant, over three and a half feet high, gave a. 

 kind of scale of what the growth should have been, 

 one diseased plant was hardly four inches in height, 

 with the stem flattened and widened and swelled at 

 the base, and two others were only about ten inches 

 high. In one instance there were about eight side- 

 shoots from six inches length of main stem, these so 

 placed that the whole plant with its shoots and pods 

 had a kind of oval fan shape. Some of the pods were 

 straight and rightly shaped, but a large proportion of 

 them were stunted and distorted, and some of them 

 were scarcely as much as three-quarters of an inch in 

 length. The lower part of the thickened stem was 

 much curved ; and in the case of another of the plants, 

 the stem was so much curved just at the ground level 

 that (although it was altogether scarcely more than 

 twelve inches high) about three inches of the length 

 was nearly horizontal. 



From the above descriptions of the alterations of 

 forms of growth which are to be found accompanying 

 Stem Eelworm presence, in three very distinctly 

 different kinds of crops, it will be seen that these are 

 quite sufidciently characteristic to enable any ordinary 

 observer to judge, from external appearance alone, 

 whether this kind of, Eelworm infestation is present. 

 It will be noticed that there is frequently a stioitcd, but 

 at the same time a swelled, growth of the stem, and 

 that this often bears on its abnormally short length 

 as many, or nearly as many, buds or shoots (probably 

 distorted) as would have been developed in healthy 

 growth on the normal length of stem ; also that there 

 is a tendency to a swelling, or bulb-like formation, at 

 the base of the stem, which is especially observable in 

 the case of attack to Oat plants, and this bulb-like 



