THE DARNEL. 



its habit, and ripens its seeds at about the same time as 

 the wheat, from which it is with difficulty separated at 

 the time of thrashing, owing to the size of the seeds being 

 much the same. Happily, however, it is rapidly disap^ 

 pearing in this country before the march of improved hus- 

 bandry, though, from the proportion of its seeds met with 

 in most samples of foreign wheat, it would appear still to 

 hold its place in the corn fields of the Continent. 



Although its effects upon the human economy when eaten 

 mixed in the wheaten bread are not so disastrous as those 

 produced by ergot (see page 181, vol i.) when consumed 

 under similar conditions, it exerts a prejudicial action, 

 which in some instances has led to fatal results. Cases 

 may still be occasionally heard of country districts where, 

 in years of scarcity, the inferior samples of foreign corn 

 have been largely used for bread purposes; and Parnell, 

 in his Grasses of Britain, records a recent case of poison- 

 ing caused by this grass, wherein the symptoms produced 

 were somnolency, convulsive tremors, and coldness of the 

 extremities. The plant itself may be distinguished from 

 the common ryegrasses by its erect habit of growth, the 

 stems being stout, and from 2^ to 3 feet high, and feel 

 rough or serrated on drawing them through the fingers 

 upwards. The presence of darnel in the meal or flour of 

 wheat may be detected by Ruspini's test, which cannot 

 be made too generally known, viz., "that the adulterated 

 flour may be readily detected by digesting it in alcohol, 

 which, when L. temulentum is present, assumes a charac- 

 teristic green tint/' 



Lolium arvense is the Beardless Darnel, a variety only 

 of the other, which it resembles in its habits of growth, 

 but from which it differs in having only very short imper- 

 fect awns and a smooth culm or stem. It is said to pos- 

 sess the same noxious properties, and appears to be the 

 variety mostly met with in samples of wheat from the 

 southern countries of Europe. 



