BLIGHTED EARS. 175 



removed ; also watering the land with a strong saline 

 solution, or leaving the land fallow and perfectly free 

 from weeds, until the enemy is starved out. The 

 ravages of the slug must also be named among the 

 attacks to which wheat is liable ; these are chiefly 

 carried on when the crop has been sown in autumn 

 after clover and beans. 



Another serious evil is known by the name of ear- 

 cockle, purples, or pepper-corn, because the grain, when 

 infected by it, becomes nearly black, and is also rounded 

 in shape something like a pepper-corn. Upon open- 

 ing these blighted grains they are found to be full of a 

 moist white cottony substance, which has taken the 

 place of the flour. When this cotton is examined 

 under a microscope, it is found to consist of a multitude 

 of small active creatures, twisting and writhing about 

 like so many eels or snakes. When a sound grain of 

 wheat is sown by the side of one infected, the young 

 plant suffers no injury until about the mouth of March, 

 when the animalcules begin to find their way from the 

 blighted grain into the earth, and thence into the 

 young corn. They gradually ascend within the stem 

 till they reach the ovule (or young state of the seed) in 

 the flower-bud, even before the ear has shown itself. It 

 has been supposed that they do not increase in size 

 till they have reached the young seed, but then grow 

 rapidly, deposit a large number of eggs, and die. It 

 has been calculated that fifty thousand young might be 

 packed into a moderately sized grain of wheat. It 

 is an astonishing fact, that if a mass of these animals be 

 so perfectly diied that the slightest touch would reduce 

 them to powder, and kept six or seven years in this 

 state, if moistened with a drop of water, they speedily 

 revive and become as active as ever. Professor Henslow, 

 who gives these particulars, recommends that the seed 

 supposed to be infected with this serious evil should be 

 scalded in water, but not to an extent which shall de- 

 stroy the germinating powers of the grain, 



