ERGOT NOT NOTICED. 105 



matter will receive more attention in parts of 

 our own country, where morbid and unaccount- 

 able disorders prevail amongst the poor. Ergot 

 is not unlikely to be the unsuspected source of 

 much suffering hitherto baffling inquiry. 



The specimens of ergot of rye drawn for 

 this section, were gathered by the author in 

 September, 1845, in a sort of peaty soil, with 

 a stiff cold subsoil. The rye was late, and 

 pretty nearly every other ear was more or less 

 ergotted. In the previous September, he found 

 exactly the same thing in the next field. The 

 general opinion seems to be, that any wet hard 

 land is suitable to its development. But the 

 singular thing is, that so few people notice it. 

 Threshers in barns will declare they never saw 

 it, till it is pointed out to them. A farmer of 

 great activity, eighty years of age, assured the 

 author he had never seen it. He soon gathered 

 a piece of ergotted rye-grass, and showed it to 

 the old man, who said, " Well, in all my life, I 

 never saw such a thing before!" Indeed, by 

 the men who work in our barns, it is probably 

 often mistaken, when on the floor, for the dung 

 of rats and mice, which it not a little resembles. 



The prevalence of ergot in those fields where 

 the drainage is imperfect, and its disappearance 

 D 3 



