Blight is a term loosely applied to a number of parasitic diseases. In it are included mildew, cories, and even rust and smut. The fungi producing these diseases attack the plant and seed at various stages of its growth. The whole kernel is affected, and not merely the external coat, as is sometimes maintained. When blighted grain is sown, the disease recurs the following year, often making it necessary to import new seed before the disease can be eradicated. Various remedies have been used to destroy the spores of these fungi, but all are uncertain and some are dangerous to health. Special machinery and methods have been employed in the mills to separate the mildew from the grain. Some of these succeed in removing the fungi and discoloration from the surface of the grain, but have no effects upon the parts within. Blighted grain is soft, and has an unpleasant taste and smell, and bread made of it is liable to be heavy and sodden. It is undeniable that the use of blighted grain as food is exceeding dangerous to health. It is a well known fact that vegetable parasites may attack animals; the silk worm disease produced by the _Botrytis baniana_, being an example. It is stated that the same vegetable parasites which produce plant diseases, when transmitted to the animal body produce special affections, the form and appearance of the germs being altered by their environments. The same germs developed under different conditions of temperature and surrounding medium, assume forms so various that they have been supposed to belong to different species and even different genera. If there is any truth, then, in the germ theory of disease, it is not so very improbable that a fungus which will produce blight in grain may cause cholera or tetanoid fever in an animal. Hallier, the famous physiological botanist, observed in 1867 that there was a peculiar disease of the rice plant associated with an epidemic of cholera. Rice plants fertilized with the discharges of cholera patients were affected with blight. A concentrated infusion of the blighted grain would produce changes in all animal substances, blood and albumen being converted into thin odorless products resembling in every respect the material found in the kidneys of cholera patients.