ERGOTED GRAIN. 
283 
as they have been called, or alternations of generations, must 
take place ; and it is by studying these that we can get at 
something like valuable information with reference to the man¬ 
ner in which these creatures are propagated. It is now several 
years since I thoroughly convinced myself of this fact; and I 
believe nearly every person who is at all observing or familiar 
with the circumstance knows, that if you slit up the gall-ducts 
of sheep or any other animals long affected with distoma, 
though you may see some of thesecreatures smallerthan others, 
you never see what might be in truth called a number of young 
flukes ; nor will you be able to discover any by microscopi¬ 
cally examining the bile in which they live. This, then, together 
with the other circumstance to which 1 have referred, shows 
at once there is not a reproduction of these entozoa within the 
biliary ducts; so that (to put it in a practical way) supposing 
a sheep to receive six flukes into the biliary ducts, they 
would never multiply therein. They w T ould deposit millions of 
eggs in the smallest ramifications of the ducts—instinctively 
deposited there, it w'ould seem, for the purpose of preventing 
them from too rapidly flowing out by the functions of those 
organs—but you would never have more than six flukes. Now r , 
what does this explain ? It explains a fact of every-day oc¬ 
currence. A person will often tell you, “1 sent a lot of 
sheep to the butcher: I never had more perfect animals: 
they were as fat as sheep could be; yet the butcher found 
ten or twelve flukes in the liver.” The fact is that, in this 
case, they did not exist in sufficient numbers to lay the foun¬ 
dation for disease. If it were otherwise, we can see that if 
one fluke only passed into the biliary duct it would multiply 
almost ad infinitum , and that the animal must fall a victim to 
the affection induced thereby. Here, then, we have a prac¬ 
tical result at once, arising with many others from an inves¬ 
tigation of the natural history of this entozoon. 
(To be continued .) 
ON ERGOTED GRAIN. 
Much investigation has taken place of late respecting the 
nature of ergoted grain. As the subject is one of some inter¬ 
est to our readers, we extract the following notice of it from 
. the Gardeners'* Chronicle: 
Ergot is an affection of the seeds of many species of grass, 
including those which are cultivated under the common name 
of corn, by which they are converted into a hard, dark, spur¬ 
shaped body, generally much larger and longer than the seed, 
though sometimes, as in wheat, not differing very materially 
