40 
CORN. 
also in the adjacent county of Linlithgow.” Also, as below quoted, 
he again noted that no benefit resulted from application of nitrate of 
soda as a remedy; benefit, however, had followed on use of sulphate 
of potash. He noted that a farmer, “ after trying, on a field badly 
affected with the disease, a top-dressing of nitrate of soda without 
beneficial effect, applied half a cwt. per acre of sulphate of potash, 
which immediately checked the work of destruction, and brought the 
plant away, so that the crop has reached quite an average. A small 
portion not treated in this way is a failure from the disease. It may 
be that sulphate of potash, applied when the Eelworms are active, acts 
as a poison. It does not appear, so far as I can learn, to harm them 
when applied with the seed.” 
“ I cannot find any indication that the extent of the attack is 
dependent upon the crop preceding the Oat, or of any other cereal 
crop being affected in a similar way. Neither can I find anything to 
show that the disease is communicated by means of straw from an 
affected crop applied as manure.”* 
On August 22nd Mr. Eobert Drennan wrote to me from Goatfoot 
Farm, Galston, Ayrshire, as follows;—“A good part of my farm is 
holm land, in fair condition and wrought on the four-course system, 
which means a crop of Oats, a green crop, a crop of Oats or Wheat, and 
a hay crop. For several years I sowed Beans as part of the green crop, 
and I found the ‘ Tulip-root ’ much worse on the plot where the Beans 
were ; so I gave up sowing them, and, although the land has gone 
through a course of cropping, the beaned plots are worse than the 
other portions of the field still.” 
Mr. Drennan further observed that he had thought that Beans 
preceding Oats was a cause of the attack, but also he mentioned that 
where the Beans were sown he took an Oat crop following. “ The 
other portion of the field was Wheat, which meant two crops of Oats 
in the four years on the Bean plot, and one Oat crop on the other.” 
Eelatively to the point of Anguilhilida, being possibly found about 
both Oats and Beans, he forwarded to me some stumps of Bean plants 
off land where “Tulip-root” had been bad the previous year. I 
examined these carefully for presence of “ Tulip-root ” 
but could not find any present either in the roots or lower part of the 
stems or attacked earth,—in fact, they appeared to be completely 
absent. Mr. Drennan notes that he sowed his “Beans with about 
3 cwt. to the acre of sulphate of potash with other manure. If 
sulphate of potash be a cure, that may account for the absence of 
the w^orm.” 
I take the liberty of inserting the following observations on the 
* Observations as to methods of transmission of attack, and length of time 
which it may continue in the land, will be found at pp. 45 - 47. 
