180 THE RYE CROP. 



of grass or corn which is attacked sometimes projecting 

 like a cock's spur (whence its name, which is of French 

 extraction) far beyond the surrounding glumes, assuming 

 a gray, brownish, purple, violet, or, at last, a black colour, 

 and crowned frequently with the withered style and inte- 

 guments which are carried up with the elongated ovule. 

 Sometimes a large portion of the grains are ergoted (Secale 

 cornutum), but more frequently only one or two are affected 

 in a spike, the ovules being abortive, though the diseased 

 structure has not been perfected. Much controversy has 

 taken place respecting the nature of this complaint, which 

 has been supposed to arise from excessive but unwhole- 

 some nutriment, from the derangement of the equilibrium 

 of the energies of the anthers and pistil, and other causes 

 equally unfounded. It is now, however, a well-established 

 fact that it is due to the presence of a minute parasitic 

 fungus, 1 which causes a preternatural growth of the ovule/* 

 The peculiar form which the disease assumes is shown 

 (natural size) in the woodcut at p. 170, No. 2. This 

 great change which has taken place in the affected grains 

 enables them to be readily distinguished, and thus picked 

 out from the sound grains. Where they have been, 

 either through ignorance or carelessness, ground up to- 

 gether and used as food, the most distressing conse- 

 quences have resulted. Experiments have proved that 

 its effects are as fatal to the lower animals as to the 

 human frame, in which its tendency is to set up 

 gangrene of the worst description, with great rapidity, 

 after it has been consumed. In this country many fatal 

 instances are on record. 2 On the Continent, however, 

 where rye enters more largely into the general food of 

 the people, and where agriculture is less advanced than 



1 The name given to this fungus by botanists is Spermoedia. 



2 In a paper by Professor Henslow "On the Diseases of Wheat," this dis- 

 ease is fully described, and instances of its fatal effects given. Roy. Agri. Soc. 

 Jour. i \ol. ii. p. 14. 



