20 CLOVEB. 



observable with the belp of high microscopic powers, are of little service 

 for general use. The wormlets propagate by egg-laying, and may be 

 found in egg and young state and also as fully-formed males and 

 females together in the misshaped stems and leaf-buds of the infested 

 Clover. 



In the case of Clover " Stem-sickness " in the early part of the 

 year, the circumstance of the stalks and branches being shorter and 

 thicker than in healthy growth is characteristic of attack, joined to the 

 altered state of the buds themselves, which may be found much 

 thickened in shape ; often a number of them growing solitarily on the 

 crown of the plant being of an irregularly enlarged and prolonged oval 

 or bulb-shape. When attention is drawn to the attack in its winter 

 condition, probably many or most of the above-described form of buds 

 and of the diseased shoots and branches will be found to be dying or 

 decaying; but where the mischief is not so far advanced, the Stem 

 Eelworms may be found both in young and mature state in the plants. 



In summer the characteristic malformations are much more fully 

 developed, and, as late as when the flowering-heads are still present, 

 attacked growths may be found in the form of short barren shoots 

 about an inch long, of oval shape, and with the leaf-growths distorted 

 so as merely to overlap each other, and form a kind of tile-like imbri- 

 cated exterior. These shoots are placed close together, and, where I 

 have seen them, as many as five grew on an inch length of stem, one 

 at the end, and two on each side, so as to form a flat fan-like mass. 

 The shapes varied ; they were commonly irregular, and oval, and 

 somewhat bulb-shaped, or much prolonged, and sometimes the lower 

 part of the flowering stem was enlarged for an inch or two at the base. 

 In various of these shoots I found the Eelworms present up to numbers 

 which might be described as "swarming" in the palish brown powdery, 

 or rather granular, matter in the hollow near the base, or other parts 

 of the perishing shoots. 



But it is usually the spring or rather the winter condition of which 

 samples are sent me for identification ; and in the past year the first 

 inquiries were sent me in the last days of January as to great damage 

 that was being done to Clover, stated to be by grubs sent. These were 

 larvaB of the Clover-leaf Weevil (Sitones), but I saw no reason (from so 

 much information as was sent me) to attribute the mischief to these 

 grubs, and on examining samples of the diseased plants sent me on 

 February 3rd, from Skirbeck- Quarter, Boston, by Mr. G. Eainey, I 

 found them to be suffering from Eelworm Stem-sickness. There were 

 the long misformed buds and deformed shoots (now brown) which are 

 characteristic of this attack, and within these, where I examined, 

 Eelworms of different degrees of development were numerously present. 

 These were, when I began examination, torpid, but the youngest 



