Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/378

 348 or wet, or are owing to the baneful stimulus of parasitical fungi irritating the vital principle, like the young progeny of insects as above related. Sir Joseph Banks has, with great care and sagacity, traced the progress of the Blight in Corn, Uredo frumenti, Sowerb. Fung. t. 140, and given a complete history of the minute fungus which causes that appearance. See Annals of Botany, v. 2. 51, t. 3, 4. Under the inspection of this eminent promoter of science, Mr. Francis Bauer has made microscopical drawings of many similar fungi infecting the herbage and seeds of several plants, but has decided that the black swelling of the seed of corn, called by the French Ergot, though not well distinguished from other appearances by the generality of our agricultural writers, is indubitably a morbid swelling of the seed, and not in any way connected with the growth of a fungus. The anthers of certain plants often exhibit a similar disease, swelling, and producing an inordinate quantity of dark purplish powder instead of true pollen, as happens in Silene inflata, Fl. Brit. ''Engl. Bot. t. 164, and the white Lychnis dioica, t.'' 1580,