NOTES ON PLANT DISEASES OF CONNECTICUT. 737 



bacteria to act, produces in the plant tissues deleterious products 

 that injure or render dangerous their use for feeding purposes. 



Tubeuf, in the English edition of his Diseases of Plants, page 

 306, says concerning Tilletia Tritici (a very closely related smut, 

 also found in grain in this country) : "The smut also possesses 

 poisonous properties which make flour contaminated with it 

 dangerous to human beings and the straw or chaff injurious 

 to cattle. . . . The symptoms in the few cases of disease observed 

 do not agree very closely. A paralyzing effect on the centers 

 of deglutition and the spinal cord seem to be regularly present. 

 As a result one generally finds a continuous chewing movement 

 of the jaws and a flow of saliva, also lameness, staggering, 

 and falling. Cattle, sheep, swine and horses are all liable to 

 attack." 



McAlpine, in his Smuts of Australia, page 81, records a case 

 in which six hundred and fifty Leghorns dropped in a few days 

 from a daily average of one hundred eggs to sixteen when they 

 were fed on smutted wheat, and when this was stopped and 

 clean wheat substituted, they regained in three weeks an average 

 daily yield of eighty eggs. He also records an experiment with 

 pigeons in which one pair was fed smutted wheat for twenty- 

 two weeks, while the other pair was fed sound wheat. The 

 doves fed good wheat laid seven eggs during this period, while 

 the others laid only two. Both pairs of pigeons at the start 

 were in good plumage, and the pair fed on good wheat retained 

 the good plumage and was fat at the end of the experiment, 

 while the other pair was in poor condition, with the feathers 

 all standing out. 



While writing on this subject of deleterious animal foods, 

 we might mention that we have also occasionally had whole 

 oats sent in that horses refused to eat. We have never found 

 any fungus that might be the cause of a musty condition of 

 these oats. It has been thought that in these cases the 

 oats were bleached by some sulphur process, and that this had 

 left them unpalatable to the horses. We have also recently 

 heard of a case where certain farmers last year purchased oats 

 for feeding purposes, and as they looked plump and white they 

 were also used for seed. None of the fields sowed with these 

 oats came up, and as they were to serve as a cover crop for 

 grass seed, the latter also failed. It seems quite probable that 



