38 



THE WHEAT CULTUEIST. 



and placed under cover bj night. At the end of a 

 month each pot contained three plants, all, even those 

 in the pot without any organic substance, equally 

 healthy and luxuriant, about a span high, and with two 

 leaves each. 



" In the pot in which was the piece of bread, the 

 roots of the spelt were much branched, the fibres almost 

 all turned toward the sides of the pot ; the numerous 

 suckers were as yet scarcely modified, or had only slight 

 gibbosities toward the extremity ; no circulation was 

 perceptible ; the granular mucous substance inside was 

 more or less abundant, and many were sprinkled ex- 

 ternally toward the extremity with similar mucous 

 granular masses. A few fibres approached within a 

 certain distance of the bread, but none had penetrated 

 within it. The bread had become a soft, putrid, spongy . 

 mass, covered externally with white branching filaments 

 spreading from it into the sand in every direction, and 

 already in many places having nearly reached the sides 

 of the pot ; and here and there a commencement of fruc- 

 tification seemed to show that these filaments belonged 

 to a species of Botrytis. The spongy mass of the bread 

 was also almost entirely occupied by a violet-colored 

 mycelium which appeared to be that of a Penicillium y 

 the filaments of this mycelium had also spread from 

 the bread in various directions. Some had descended 

 to the bottom of the pot, where they had attacked and 

 produced a morbid alteration on one side of a bit of the 

 rhizome of Smilax asjpera^ which had been placed over 

 the hole of the pot. In another direction the mycelium 

 of this Penicillium^ together with a few filaments from 

 tlie Botrytis^ had reached a fibre of the Triticum^ and had 

 encircled it for the length of half an inch. The portion 



