290 Annual Report of the Consulting Botanist for 1880. 
there was need for care in using sulphate of copper and the 
older steeps, there is much more care necessary with the irritant 
steeps now largely and successfully employed. My attention 
was called to this matter by a member of the Society whose 
wheat had almost entirely failed to germinate, and he rightly 
attributed this result to the use of a steep in which carbolic acid 
was a main ingredient. I made several experiments with the 
particular steep he had employed, and with others ; and I found 
that they were efficient for the destruction of the spores of the 
fungi, but when they were incautiously applied they were equally 
destructive to the grain as well. The part of the seed first 
injured was the radicle of the embryo. This is the least pro- 
tected part of the embryo, and it is the first part called into active 
service in the germination of the plant. The action of the 
irritant steep is to destroy the tender terminal cells of the radicle, 
and this completely arrests its growth. When the injury is 
confined to the main radicle, the two lateral radicles which exist 
in the embryo of the wheat when it leaves the parent plant, take 
its place, and the initial check in the life of the plant does not 
produce any permanent injury. In the experiments, I found 
that even when the greatest care was taken to carry out the 
application of the steeps as directed by the various proprietors, 
a certain percentage — -not large — of the seeds suffered ; and that 
with the increase of the strength of the solution, or the length of 
time the seed was exposed to its action, the injury increased, 
and the embryo was more and more destroyed. In some cases 
the ascending axis protruded itself, and continued a sickly life 
while the starch of the seed supplied it with food, but the radicle 
having been completely destroyed, the plants did not succeed in 
establishing themselves in the soil. In the case of seeds exposed 
for twelve hours to a steep of the ordinary strength, every seed 
was killed. It is consequently impossible to impress too strongly 
on the farmer to employ these valuable steeps with great caution, 
and to follow carefully the specified instructions, both as to the 
strength of the steep and the time which the operation should 
occupy. It is, however, not desirable to return to the earlier 
and less dangerous steeps, for the evil properties of these newer 
steeps are due to the action in a too prolonged or concentrated 
form of a property which, duly regulated, is very efficacious for 
the purposes intended. 
During the year I visited the growing crops of the wheats 
competing for the prizes offijred by the Society, and the results 
of these visits, together with the information supplied by the 
growers, are incorporated in the Report, which appears on 
pp. 75-86 of this 'Journal.' 
