ORIGIN OF THE ERGOT OF RYE. 
239 
paper, published in the "Proceedings of the Linnaean Society," 
does not contain all the opinions that gentleman entertained 
at that time; for, after his description of the fungus, and his 
discovery of it in the anthers, and his opinion that it caused 
ergot by communicating disease to the grain, he mentioned 
that these minute joints became animated, or, in other words, 
animalcules, when kept for a short time in the liquid that was 
obtained from the plant which contained them; which fact is 
in opposition to his former discovery; for one being cannot 
belong to two kingdoms, and I expressed my opinion on this 
and other points; and, as F. B. seems to recollect, I uttered 
the words " I am sure you are wrong." 
In the interval between the meeting of the Linnaean So- 
ciety, on the 6th of November, and that of the 4th of Decem- 
ber, I carried on my examinations into the cause and structure 
of ergot; and at the meeting of the Society held on the even- 
ing of the latter date, I am accused of adopting Mr. Smith's 
views in the paper that was then read. I confess I did adopt 
his views of the nature of ergot, but I did so without borrow- 
ing his discovery of the fungus on the anthers to convince me; 
and it was by patient investigation, and experiments of a deli- 
cate nature, that I arrived at the conclusions I did, which took 
three weeks of continued examination to complete, and which 
substantially proved what I then considered had only pre- 
viously been partially done. 
These observations are recorded in another place, and are 
not required to be gone through again in the present instances; 
suffice it to say, that they consisted in proving that the ex- 
ternal particles of the ergot were not animalcules, but sporules 
of a fungus, which I succeeded in causing to germinate, going 
through all the various states, from the commencement to the 
perfect state of a plant, up to its development of similar bodies 
to those from which itself was produced: which series ofobserva- 
tions incontestably proved that the fungus was a separate plant 
from the grain, and I considered I had as much right to make 
known my discovery of the independent germination of the 
