? 



Ergot might supply an interesting text from which to exhibit 

 the worthlessness of speculation as opposed to observation and 

 experiment in dealing with natural science. Keplacing, as it 

 does, the seeds of different grasses, and always attaining, when 

 full grown, a greater size than the normal seed, it was at first 

 thought to indicate an extra quantity of life and vigour in the 

 particular seed, which exhausted themselves in the production of 

 the anomalous horned grain. No special properties were asso- 

 ciated with these abnormal productions. All along the ergot had 

 been exerting its baneful influence on man and animals without 

 being suspected. Through its agency the inhabitants of whole 

 districts in France had been visited with intermittent attacks of 

 gangrenous diseases ; and England, as Professor Henslow has 

 shown in the pages of the 'Journal of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society of England' (vol. ii. pp. 14-19), has records of similar 

 though not so extensive calamities. Yet many years have not 

 elapsed since these and other evils have been traced to their true 

 source, — the consumption of ergotted corn as food. 



The remarkable action of ergot on the gravid uterus is well 

 known, and has caused it to be used for many years as a powerful 

 aid in cases of difficult or prolonged parturition. It has been 

 more recently determined that its power of causing muscular con- 

 traction extends to all unstriped or involuntary muscular fibre, 

 and it has consequently been applied in treating certain maladies 

 connected with the intestinal canal and the arteries, because these 

 organs, like the gravid uterus, are chiefly composed of this kind 



The « Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England,' 

 and other periodicals devoted to agricultural subjects, contain 

 frequent narratives of the injuries to stock resulting from the 

 occurrence of ergot in grass crops. Mr. H. Tanner records the 

 loss to one breeder of cattle in Shropshire of 1200L in three years 

 from this cause (vol. xix, p. 40). Recent losses, especially in 



