AmNivU,ri879arm'}  Growth  and  Development  of  C lav iceps  purpurea.  561 
monly  but  erroneously  spelled  "rye"  grass.  A  strict  inquiry  being 
made  as  to  the  symptoms,  the  farmer  informed  me  that  they  were 
always  the  same,  and  generally  supervened  in  the  month  of  August, 
when  this  very  peculiar  illness  on  the  farm  became  prevalent.  It  took 
the  form  of  dysentery,  inflammation  of  the  bowels,  diarrhoea,  the 
evacuations  resembling  coffee  grounds,  afterwards  succeeded  by  exhaus- 
tion, collapse  and  death. 
Analyses  of  water  and  the  soil  were  made  for  the  purpose  of  detect- 
ing any  deleterious  metal  or  other  irritant  poison.  No  satisfactory 
result  followed,  and  the  cause  of  the  illness  seemed  to  be  mysterious  and 
inexplicable.  At  length  I  heard  that  the  ewes  sometimes  slipped  their 
young,  which  gave  a  remote  suspicion  that  the  cause  of  all  might  be 
due  to  ergotism.  An  inquiry  was  then  made  as  to  the  presence  of 
gangrene,  when  the  unexpected  but  significant  remark  was  made  that, 
although  the  farm  was  on  a  dry,  porous,  sandy  slope,  yet  the  sheep 
always  had  the  "foot-rot,"  even  in  the  summer,  which  defied  all  the 
remedies  that  usually  proved  effectual.  With  this  idea  in  my  mind, 
and  while  watching  the  lambs  feeding,  I  noticed  that  they  avoided  the 
old  mature  plants,  while  they  greedily  devoured  the  young  green  ones. 
On  examining  more  minutely  the  former,  I  noticed  several  well- 
formed,  purplish,  dark-colored  ergots  were  projecting  from  the  paleae, 
but  could  not  discover  a  single  specimen  on  the  younger  fresh  plants. 
Several  of  these  ergots  were  then  taken  home  for  chemical  and  micro- 
scopic examination.  I  made  a  considerable  number  of  sections,  which 
exactly  coincided  with  the  beautiful  and  truthful  engravings  in  the 
paper  by  Tulasne  in  the  "Annales  Sc.  Nat."  for  1853,  ^ur  I'Ergot  des 
Glumacdes.  While  here,  I  must  stop  to  express  my  admiration,  both 
at  the  accuracy  of  these  microscopic  delineations  and  the  description  of 
the  metamorphoses  of  this  curious  fungus.  I  thought  that  this  would 
be  a  good  opportuity  of  studying  the  growth  of  this  vegetable,  and  that 
the  result  of  my  observations  during  the  following  year  may  prove  to 
be  of  some  service  in  the  cause  of  pharmacy. 
During  the  next  few  months  I  had  only  the  old  and  nearly  dead 
stems  of  the  Lolium  on  which  I  could  work,  but  on  the  12th  of  April 
1  obtained  some  specimens  of  the  Lolium  perenne  in  which  the  com- 
mencement of  the  inflorescence  was  just,  to  be  observed.  Soon  after- 
wards I  made  several  sections  of  caryopsides,  on  which  were  many 
thousands  of  conidia,  which  seemed  rapidly  to  multiply  and  to  com- 
