‘¢ TULIP-ROOT.”’ 89 
the preceding crop is not mentioned, but as infestation of Kelworms 
when remaining in the land, is most especially near the surface, it 
suggests that the shallow seed-bed mentioned may have had something 
to do with the attack. 
On June 19th a sample of growing Oats from a crop then dying 
away from something going wrong round the roots was sent me for 
examination from the Estate Office, Calthorpe, near Rugby. The 
plants were in a very bad state; some, if not all, had the outer leaves 
dying and brown, and the plants themselves were still small, at a 
general estimate only about six inches hich. 
On July 18th specimen plants of Black Oats were forwarded to me 
by Mr. C. Iveland Blyth, from Plestowes, Barford, showing remarkably 
bad attack of Tulip-root, with great quantity of distorted shoots at the 
base of the stem (see preceding figure). In this case scarcely any of 
the leaves were more than twelve inches in length. The field from 
which the plants were taken was mentioned as being very much 
damaged by some attack ‘‘ which resolves itself into making the plant 
as per enclosed.” 
On Aug. 2nd an application was sent me by favour of Messrs. 
Webb and Sons, Stourbridge, regarding condition of a sample of Black 
Tartarian Oats, of which the sender had mentioned that ‘‘ the crop 
came on all right until recently, when some disease attacked it, with 
the result shown by specimen plant.’’ This was the only sample sent 
me in which the nature of the infestation was only drawn attention to 
by the swelled or Tulip-bulb-like enlargement of the base of the stems 
(from which the attack takes its name), unaccompanied by the growth 
of little spindling shoots, pale in colour, and bent in all directions of 
their inch or two in length, which often surround the lowest part of 
the swelled base of the Oat stem. 
Later on, on Dec. 20th, I was favoured by the following note of a 
summer attack, once again to Black Tartarian Oats, being sent me by 
Mr. T. Carrington Smith, from Admaston, Rugeley. After referring 
to some recent observations of my own on Tulip-root in Oats, Mr. 
Carrington Smith observed :— 
** You say very truly that this disease has been ‘more than ordi- 
narily prevalent.’ 
** In seven acres of Oats, after Swedes, on land very clean and in 
excellent condition, the disease destroyed more than half my crop in a 
very erratic and patchy manner. In the ordinary course of treatment 
both mineral superphosphate, 3 cwt., and nitrate of soda, 1 cwt., had 
been applied before the disease was suspected. And in the ordinary 
course Clover seeds of alternate husbandry had been sown on land 
through which an apparently good plant of Oats was springing. 
‘‘ What puzzles me is the fact that the seeds have all along been 
