Anbury, Club-root , or Finger and Toe. 339 
anbury. The true cause of the disease being known we are in 
a position better to determine how its spread can be prevented. 
It is obvious first of all that diseased turnips and cabbages 
should be thoroughly destroyed, and the most efficient agent is 
fire; or, put into a heap and mixed with gas lime or other 
lime, they might be applied without fear of injury to pasture 
land. But this cannot reach the spores that have fallen into the 
ground or been blown on it. We must find some cheap material 
within the reach of the farmer which when added to the soil 
will kill the spores either when they are at rest or after ger- 
mination, when the naked protoplasm is pushing its way through 
the soil in search of the roots of cruciferous plants. Practical 
agriculturists appear to have found this in lime. There is 
abundant testimony that a judicious application of lime to a 
field where anbury has prevailed prevents its appearance in the 
succeeding crop. Carbon bisulphide when applied to the soil 
also kills the spores. Other substances may be equally effica- 
cious, but this can only be determined by a series of careful 
experiments. The serious annual loss in the turnip crop would 
justify considerable trouble being taken in this direction. 
William Carruthers. 
THE SPRING DROUGHT OF 1893. 
No two droughts are exactly alike, and yet when a drought 
occurs, almost the first desire of those who suffer from it is to 
know whether or not there is any precedent for it, and if so, 
when a similar one happened, and what were its effects ? The 
answer to the second part of this question can be given much 
better by others 1 than by myself, and therefore I shall not 
attempt to deal with the subject of benefit or of injury. 
Until quite recently — within the last ten or twenty years 
perhaps — no one had ever defined what constituted a drought ; 
and, in the absence of a definition, terribly loose statements 
were made. Until the introduction of rain gauges (about 1666) 
no quantitative measurement of a drought was possible, and 
until about 1887 no definition had been adopted. Even in the 
[ continued on p. 349 
1 Attention may be directed to the following papers which have appeared in 
the Journal: — “Some of the Agricultural Lessons of 1868,” by J. Chalmers 
Morton (Yol. V., 2nd series, 1869, p. 27) ; and “ Effects of Drought of 1870 on 
Crops at Rothamsted,” by J. B. Lawes and J. H. Gilbert (Vol. VII., 2nd series. 
1871, p. 91 ).— Ed. 
