Before considering the remedy for this evil, it will be well to distinguish it from the “purples, ear-cockle, or peppercorn” (_vibrio tritici_)—a name expressive of its animal origin, and frequently rendered “wheat-eels.” In the purples, the grain is shorter than a healthy wheat grain, irregular in shape (cockled), and purple externally; but its interior is filled with what, to the naked eye, is like very short white cotton-wool. On placing a bit of this woolly substance with the point of a needle on a slip of glass, just touching it with water and submitting it to a high magnifying power, the term “wheat-eel” will at once be seen to be justified; for, if alive, thousands of eel-like creatures will be seen writhing in the fluid. The differences of these two affections of wheat may be expressed as follows:— _Bunt._ _Ear-cockle._ Grain smooth externally, sometimes Grain cockled and irregular in appearing black from blackened shape, purple externally, skin interior grains showing through thickened, interior of the grains the thin epidermis (bran). These stuffed with a white cottony corns easily crush beneath the substance, not compressible by finger, emitting the black fungi. the finger; but being opened, and the interior magnified, exhibits the living wheat-eels. As regards the ear-cockle, we incline to the belief that a damp atmosphere and cold soil are chiefly concerned in its spread, if not in its production. As we have shown the difference between it and bunt, we now proceed to offer a few remarks upon the production of the latter, and its remedies. Bunt is mainly produced by defective seed. It occurs on all kinds of soils—sands, clays, and limestones—and is not peculiar to any climate. Professor Henslow believes the disease to be wholly propagated by the spores of the fungus adhering to the wheat-seed. He says, “It has been clearly proved that wheat plants may be easily infected, and the disease thus propagated, by simply rubbing the seeds before they are sown with the black powder or spores of the fungus. It is also clearly ascertained that if seeds thus tainted be thoroughly cleansed, the plants raised from them will not be infected;” and he deduces from this a proof in favour of steeping; for he says, “This fact is now so well established, that the practice of washing or steeping seed wheat in certain solutions almost universally prevails.”[17] [17] See an essay on _Diseases of Wheat_, in the _Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society_ for 1841, by the Rev. Professor Henslow.