DISEASES OF THE PLANT. 315 



sion that the "anbury" and "fingers-and-toes/' terms in- 

 discriminately applied to express a disease frequent in 

 turnips, and exhibited in the malformation of the root 

 were distinct and different affections the one being 

 a disease, and the other not so much a direct disease, in 

 the strict meaning of the word, as a change effected by 

 the circumstances of cultivation. He showed, 1 by careful 

 experiments, that the tendency of cultivation, accompanied 

 by a careful selection of seed and change of soil, is to 

 produce single tap-roots; but that amongst a variety of 

 seedlings, under the most favourable circumstances, there 

 is always a disposition to revert to the original condition, 

 and that this tendency is increased in proportion to 

 adverse agricultural influences, as untimely sowing, 

 poverty of soil, repetition of crops on the same ground, &c. 



Wherever, therefore, a large proportion of branching 

 roots occur, the quality of the seed may be suspected, espe- 

 cially if the soil be in good condition, and the same crop 

 not have been taken in succession from it. These branching 

 roots always have a greater propensity to run to seed than 

 the single ones. For its prevention, care should be taken 

 to obtain seed from carefully-selected roots, and not from 

 a crop taken indiscriminately from the ground ; that the 

 roots should not be the produce of late-sown seed, which 

 has an especial tendency to produce plants which run to 

 seed rapidly without forming full-developed bulbs; and 

 that the roots selected should have been raised and stored 

 previously to being again planted for seed. This is of 

 great importance, as by lifting and storing them, you 

 check that exuberance of vegetation, which has a tendency 

 to reduce plants to their original condition. 



With our present imperfect acquaintance with vegetable 

 physiology, especially in reference to our cultivated crops, it 

 would ill become any one to speak in a dogmatic manner as 



1 Roy. Agri. Soc. Jour., vol. xv. 



