Nov. 1899.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 239 



previously infected village, it will generally be found that 

 the person who brings the infection has slept a night in an 

 infected house, or has eaten food in one. As an example 

 of the former class of cases, there is the case of the woman 

 of Kheti mentioned above, who slept a night in Khirsal, 

 As an example of the latter class, there is the case of a 

 barber of Pokri, who, leaving his village, then perfectly 

 healthy, went and spent some hours in and got food from 

 the spontaneously infected village of Kharki, where the 

 fourteen persons died. In the case of imported plague, it 

 is generally confined to the house of the person who brings 

 the infection. Villagers who do not live in his house 

 always escape if they flee, and even the people of his 

 house often escape if they flee early. Nothing therefore 

 can be more distinct than the respective histories of a 

 spontaneous and of an imported outbreak of plague. In 

 the former, the thing to be done is to burn the poisonous 

 grain, and, perhaps, also the poisoned houses. In the 

 latter, to burn the one infected house and to send its 

 inhabitants away from the rest of the village, and away 

 from everybody else. In Garhwal, spontaneous plague 

 generally occurs in IJajput villages ; imported plague, both 

 in Dom and Eajput villages, but more frequently in the 

 former. 



10. There is every probability that the disease origin- 

 ates owing to some fungus unaffected by cooking being 

 generated in decaying grain. It is evident therefore that 

 it would be most important to ascertain what kind of fungus 

 it is, and on what kind of grain it first forms. I have 

 examined a good many species of grain, but hitherto 

 without any satisfactory result. With regard to the kind 

 of grain on which the fungus first forms, I am inclined to 

 believe that it is probably mandua {Eleusine coracana). 

 Several things lead me to suppose this, the most conclusive 

 being that I have heard that at Bait, in Kumaun, a quantity 

 of mandua was sent from the infected village of Bait to be 

 ground at a water-mill. The rats of the water-mill, who 

 had previously been healthy, all died after the mandua came 

 to the water-mill. 



11. There is one remarkable fact connected with the 

 Garhwal plague which is difficult to explain. It is that 



