396 THE DISEASES AND DISORDERS OP- THE OX. 



disastrous effects on our cattle and sheep are said to be great, so 

 much so that one wonders that landowners and farmers have as 

 yet made themselves so little acquainted with the results of 

 scientific research into its nature, growth, prevention, and very 

 serious consequences. The cultivated grasses which most often 

 become diseased by the growth of this vegetable fungus are 

 timothy grass, tall fescue, floating sweet grass, fox tail, and rye 

 grass. The weed grasses most generally infested are soft brome 

 grass, conch grass, and wall barley grass. Among the cereals it 

 is especially common in rye and maize. The French word ergot 

 signifies a spur, and was given to these peculiar fungoid growths 

 from their assuming a shape not unlike a cock s spur. 



Ergot of rye is the name used to designate the parasitic 

 growth infesting the secale cereale, or rye cereal. In those 

 countries where rye bread is much eaten, ergot of rye is often 

 present in large quantities in the flour, and very alarming 

 symptoms and death may result therefrom. In Russia and other 

 countries gangrene, or mortification of the limbs and other pans, 

 has in some seasons especially been very common. At the com- 

 mencement of last century it is recorded that no fewer than five 

 hundred patients at one time were being treated in the hospital 

 at Orleans, and these cases were entirely the result of ingestion 

 of ergot of rye in the bread. The disease set up was shown by 

 gradually extending mortification of the limbs. Amputation of 

 arms and legs did not in all cases stay its onward progress, 

 ending in death. Ergot of maize is said to be common in 

 Columbia, and to induce shedding of the hoofs in horses and 

 mules, and the laying of eggs without distinct shells by fowls 

 which have fed upon the grain so affected. 



Our readers will understand that ergot itself botanically be- 

 longs to the fungi, and the rye or other grass on which it is 

 parasitic to the graminaceae or grasses. Ergot is the sclerotium 

 of the fungus, called claviceps purpurea in the case of the rye 

 grass, in which it is produced between the pales, growing in the 

 ovule, which remains unimpregnated and undeveloped, and thus 

 never becomes a grain of rye or wheat. An ergot grain of any 

 grass is found to be a purplish or bluish-black hard elongated 

 body, easily recognised when once carefully observed. It is 

 dense and compact, and has a peculiar unpleasant odour 

 and mawkish taste. Ergot of rye is generally arched, and 



