DEATH OF HORSES FROM OATS AFFECTED WITH FUNGI. 69 
detected any vegetable poison, such as we can conceive would 
have been mixed with the oats to an extent sufficient to have 
caused the death of animals. And as we have no positive 
evidence that such a wicked proceedure had been resorted to 
by any one, we must, I think, on the score of charity, con¬ 
clude that no one had been base enough to attempt such an 
act. If then we are to discard the idea that the animals were 
not destroyed by either of the above means, that is, by no 
poison—mineral or vegetable—the question arises :—What is 
the most probable cause of death ? Is there anything peculiar 
belonging to the oats, independent of what could have been 
added to them, which w^ould be likely to affect the health of 
animals fed upon them ? This is a question which I think 
should be left open; and that we ought simply to record 
what we have noticed, leaving for future observation and in¬ 
vestigation to either negative or confirm our surmises. 
It may be asked in the first place whether anything has 
been found in the oats to raise a suspicion that they are not 
healthy food, and secondly, if so, do the symptoms wholly 
or in part, agree with those we should expect would be 
developed in horses which had been fed upon them ? On the 
arrival of the oats at the College, I at once, as a matter of 
course, looked at them, and my first impression was, that 
they were a very bad sample of feeding corn. They were 
damp, dark in colour, and had a very musty smell. 
I was now led to investigate them more closely, and 
I found that many were matted together into lumps by a 
thready, cobweb-like kind of material. The majority of 
them were covered with a smutty substance, and the interior 
of a considerable number was decayed, so that, instead of 
the natural white flower of the oat, this was filled with granular 
matter having a blackish-gray hue, and which in many in¬ 
stances. projected some distance above the surface of the oat. 
This slight investigation induced me to carry the examination 
still further, and for this purpose I sought the aid of the mi¬ 
croscope, by which I was enabled to discover, that the thready 
material consisted of elongated cells; that the surface of the 
oats was covered more or less, with well-defined bodies, wffiicli 
were also observed, but in fewer numbers, to be connected 
with the thready material, and that the dark-gray matter 
found in their interior w as granular, the granules being sup¬ 
ported by a reticular-like substance. 
During this brief examination, an idea arose in my mind 
that I w r as looking at some parasitic fungi, and which were, 
perhaps, poisonous, and I thought it even probable that the 
death of the horses might have been caused by these para- 
