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depofit its eggs or feed on wheat when growing, 
and that if that egg, eggs, or feed, be not killed 
before the corn is buried in the earth, it may there, 
after proper incubation, become an infect, and feed 
upon the tender root of the plant; and as I conceive 
every corn in an ear of wheat has a capillary tube, 
that conveys food from the root to that particular 
corn, if that conveyance be ftopt by the infe& 
having wounded or injured the tube; perhaps the 
corn, (the flour that fhould be) for want of proper 
food, may corrupt and become a black fetid pow- 
der, or what we farmers call burnts or bunts: or it 
may not be unnatural to prefume that the faces, 
effluvia, refpiration, or rather the expiration of 
the infect, may in fome meafure taint the juices 
with which the plant is fed, and bea means of 
producing, in the ears, corns filled with a black 
rancid powder, inftead of a {weet white flour; or 
that the minute animalcules may infinuate them- 
felves into the tubes of the plant, and afcend with 
the food into the hufk or bran of the corn, and, not 
having ftrength fufficient to break it, may by its 
effluvia, &c. or death, occafion the fetid {mell and 
dark colour. If part of the tubes only are injured 
by the infect, part of the corns in the fame ear 
may be burnt, the other part good; but in general, 
nay, I never found a burnt ear of wheat coming 
from any particular root, but that all the ears com- 
ing from the fame root were more or lefs burnt 
alfo. 
