48 
COBN. 
Wheat-ear Cockles; Eelworms. Tyleyichus tritici, Bastian ; 
Vibrio tritici, Curtis. 
Wormlets escaping from eggs; section of Cockle-gall, with wormlets within 
after Brauer’s figs, (much magnified). Spikelet of Wheat, with galls (magnified). 
T. tritici wormlet (greatly magnified). Nat. length of largest one-seventh to one- 
fourth inch. 
The purple galls sometimes found in great numbers taking the 
place of healthily-grown grain in ears of Wheat are caused (as well as 
the “ Tulip-root ” disease mentioned in the foregoing pages) by Eel- 
worms. The above figure gives a general idea of the wormlets and of 
the eggs enormously magnified, and the latter may easily be known by 
being rather smaller in the middle than at the two ends. 
At the end of August a bunch of Wheat-ears, almost ruined by the 
amount of Cockle-galls present, was sent by Mr. Price Jones, of Elm 
Green, Cirencester, who mentioned that he found presence of this 
Cockle-gall attack in Wheat in three fields covering together about 
twenty-seven acres. In one field, in a space of about two or three 
acres, the infested ears occurred rather frequently, perhaps two or 
three in a square yard. Over the rest of the ground they were far 
fewer, requiring some care to find them. It was remarked that this 
blight had not been noticed before by the farm-labourers. 
Specimens of Cockle-gall in Wheat-ears were also forwarded on the 
6th of October from Framlingham, in Suffolk, by the Eev. W. W. 
Tyler, with the mention that they had been brought to him as being 
rather common this autumn in several fields in the neighbourhood. 
Most of the Wheat-ears sent were very badly infested; in one which, 
by way of experiment, I rubbed out there did not appear to be any 
good grains, and the Cockles might be estimated at fifty or sixty. On 
splitting one of the galls and placing it in a drop of water the vast 
numbers of wormlets within (which were all collected together, as 
shown in the magnified section of a Wheat-grain figured) swelled up 
and overflowed in countless numbers on the microscope-slide. , 
