ON THE TRAIL OF THE FUSARIUM SPORE 149 



anxiety. I have an intuition that there is something 

 wrong, that something sinister has taken hold of me, 

 and that I am doomed," answered the wheat plant 

 that had been so quiet all day. 



All this time there was something very much 

 wrong with the wheat plant, and as this conversa- 

 tion was being carried on the villain was gleefully 

 chuckling to himself as he slowly but surely made 

 his way up the food canals of the doomed wheat 

 plant. The villain was a five-celled organism, a 

 crescent-shaped spore, known as Fusarium. He is 

 so small that millions can be placed together on the 

 point of a knife, and it requires the strongest micro- 

 scope even to detect his presence. 



He had passed the winter in an old husk of com 

 which had in it a decayed ear of corn of the previous 

 crop. This ear of corn had lost its life through the 

 ac.tivities of the villain, and had therefore been re- 

 jected as food for man or beast. Not only had the 

 warm days followed by the warm showers induced 

 the rapid growth and development of the young 

 spores, but the falling rain had loosened them from 

 the old husk of corn and washed them into the soil, 

 where they were taken up by the plant rootlets as 

 they gathered their evening food supply from the 

 warm earth. The gentle breeze also caught up 



