158 CULTIVATED VEGETABLES. 



serving the attention of physicians, present- 

 ing many phenomena, which, if well under- 

 stood, might throw much light on some 

 obscure points in physic. This inquiry seems 

 the more important, since we find that bread 

 made of damaged wheat has produced the 

 same disorder in a slighter degree. 



Mons. Fagon, first physician to Louis the 

 Fifteenth, considered it a kind of monster in 

 vegetation, which a particular sort of rye 

 sown in March is more apt to produce than 

 what is sown in the autumn : he observes, 

 that it abounds in moist cold countries, and 

 in wet seasons. 



According to the observations of Haller, it 

 is an irregular vegetation of the rye grain, 

 which puts on a middle nature between the 

 grain and the leaf, becoming of a brownish 

 green colour, irregularly compressed; and, 

 according to Marchand and Vaillant, fre- 

 quently fourteen or fifteen lines long, and 

 two lines broad. Langius, who published a 

 treatise on this disease in the German lan- 

 guage in 1717, says, he found that such seed, 

 when put into the ground, never germinated ; 

 and that it abounded most in rainy years, 

 and when a very hot summer followed a wet 

 spring. Mons. Aimes has shewn, that the 



