EEL WORMS. 
a 
on onr farm here is failing in small patches. The piece is 
looking well altogether, but here and there a plant has entirely died 
away and the root rotted.” Miss Curtis Hayward mentioned that the 
disease or injury did not appear to be always from the wet ground, as 
though the Clover had failed in a large patch in a wet place, yet also 
single plants had gone all over where they were on rising spots of 
higher ground than the plants around them, which remained green 
and flourishing. 
Dr. Ritzema Bos also replied that he could not find any Tylencld 
in the Clover plants sent from Gloucester. These Clover plants were 
in some instances so completely rotted across the stems that the shoot 
or shoots broke off on being moistened. The leaves at the top of the 
plants were perishing. I found a few Anguillulidce present in the 
decayed matter. 
On examination of specimens of these plants Dr. J. G. de Man 
replied to me, on April 14th, that he was inclined to consider a species 
of fungus as the cause of the disease, and in most of the plants he 
found, on special examination, myriads of small fungus spores. He 
mentioned that the Anguilhdidce, which were present in very small 
numbers, were the Aphelenchus modestus, and could not be the cause of 
the disease, because their number was too small. 
Dr. de Man observed, on April 25th, regarding the plants “ supposed 
to be ‘ Clover-sick ’ that you received from Quedgely, near Gloucester, 
I did not observe any abnormality in them, so that I conclude that 
they were healthy. I found a few Eelworms in them, all wrinkled 
and dried up, belonging to Plectus cirratus, Bast., Aphelenchus modestus, 
and a species of Cephalobus ; but they were innocuous in this case. 
I still may remark that these plants all may be killed by frost, and 
that frost also may be the cause of the disease of these plants. Perhaps 
the Gloucester plants have suffered from it.” 
The figure on the following page, in which the head and tail of 
three kinds of Eelworm are represented as transparent objects, is 
added to give some idea of the different internal structure of species 
of three of the genera mentioned. 
In some of the above cases it was not clear that the plants were 
attacked by true “ Clover-sickness,” and, as it was of much importance 
in the investigation to have Clover plants which were not simply 
diseased, but were suffering under the precise and special form known 
as “ Clover-sickness,” I was furnished, on April 20th, with some good 
characteristic specimens by Mr. C. Whitehead, of Barming House, 
near Maidstone, with the following note :— 
“ I send you a box of capital specimens of Clover-sick plants from 
a ‘ coomby soil’ between the chalk and the greensand in Kent. 
The roots seem unaffected. The disorder appears to begin just at the 
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