338 
Anbury , Club-root , or Finger and Toe. 
repeat the story of the original speck. The root enlarges and 
the characteristic swellings are formed. The nourishment pro- 
duced by the plant for itself is stolen by the parasite, and the 
plant becomes sickly, and, being unable to endure this persist- 
ent depletion, dies. The dead turnip, soon putrefying, becomes 
then the delectable feeding ground of numerous insects, mites, 
and eel worms ; and when removed 
from the ground it gives off a most 
offensive fetid odour. 
The fungus which has caused the 
injury dies with its host plant. It 
is a parasite, and can live only on 
a living plant. But in the course 
of its life in the turnip a remarkable 
change has taken place in many of 
the large cells filled with the slimy 
protoplasm. The protoplasm becomes 
granular, each grain is then sur- 
rounded by a delicate cell wall, and 
the whole mass of jelly-like proto- 
plasm is converted into myriads of minute spores. The large 
cell (fig. 3) with its contained spores has been happily compared 
to a very small bag filled with extremely small shot. In this 
spore condition the plant rests, resisting the action of rain and 
frost till the warmth of next spring starts it on its search after 
a cruciferous root. 
The story of this parasitic fungus in some particulars is not 
unlike that of the equally remarkable injuries done to man and 
animals by minute living creatures having some relation to the 
Mycetozoa. The treatment of cholera, consumption, or splenic 
fever was somewhat in the dark till a few years ago, when it 
was discovered that those diseases were produced by different 
bacteria. In the course of medical practice some agents were 
discovered to have beneficial effects on the patients suffering 
from one or other of these diseases, just as it was found that 
anbury could be ameliorated, if not cured, by the application of 
lime. But the efficient treatment of the disease itself when 
developed has scarcely been improved, for it is as difficult to 
destroy the Plasmodiophora in the turnip without destroying the 
turnip as it is to destroy the bacillus of consumption without 
destroying the being in which it is living. 
But a great advance has been made in preventing disease. 
The destruction of the bacteria which produce the disease is now 
diligently attended to, and the sick-room is no longer a centre for 
the distribution of the living bodies causing disease. So with 
