Rye, a genus of plants belonging to the triandria clasps; and in the natural method ranking under the 4th order, Graminae. See BOTANY and AGRICULTURE Index.

The cereale, or common rye, has glumes with rough fringes. It is a native of the island of Candia, was introduced into England many ages ago, and is the only species of rye cultivated in this kingdom. There are, however, two varieties, the winter and spring rye.

The winter rye, which is larger in the grain than the spring rye, is sown in autumn at the same time with wheat, and sometimes mixed with it; but as the rye ripens sooner than the wheat, this method must be very exceptionable. The spring rye is sown along with the oats, and usually ripens as soon as the winter rye; but the grain produced is lighter, and it is therefore seldom sown except where the autumnal crop has failed.

Rye is commonly sown on poor, dry, limestone, or sandy soils, where wheat will not thrive. By continuing to sow it on such a soil for two or three years, it will at length ripen a month earlier than that which has been raised for years on strong cold ground.

Rye is commonly used for bread either alone or mixed with wheat. This mixture is called *melin*, and was formerly a very common crop in some parts of Britain. Mr Marshall tells us, that the farmers in Yorkshire believe that this mixed crop is never affected by mildew, and that a small quantity of rye sown among wheat will prevent this destructive disease. Rye is much used for bread in some parts of Sweden and Norway by the poor people. About a century ago rye-bread was also much used in England; but being made of a black kind of rye, it was of the same colour, clammy, very detergent, and consequently not so nourishing as wheat.

Rye is subject to a disease which the French call *ergot*, and the English *horned rye*; which sometimes happens when a very hot summer succeeds a rainy spring. According to Tiffot, horned rye is such as suffers an irregular vegetation in the middle substance between the grain and the leaf, producing an excrescence of a brownish colour, about an inch and a half long, and two-tenths of an inch broad. Bread made of this kind of rye has a nauseous acid taste, and produces spasmodic and gangrenous disorders. In 1596, an epidemic disease prevailed in Hesse, which the physicians ascribed to bread made of horned rye. Some, we are told, were seized with an epilepsy, and these seldom ever recovered; others became lunatic, and continued stupid the rest of their lives: those who apparently recovered had annual returns of their disorder in January and February; and the disease was said to be contagious at least in a certain degree. The facts which we have now mentioned are taken from a work of Tiffot, which was never printed. The same disease was occasioned by the use of this bread in several parts of the continent in the years 1648, 1675, 1702, 1716, 1722, and 1736; and has been very minutely described by Hoffman, A. O. Goedicke, Vater Burghart, and J. A. Sink.

In the year 1709, one fourth part of all the rye raised in the province of Salonia in France was horned, and the surgeon to the hospital of Orleans had no less than 500 patients under his care that were disordered by eating it: They were called *ergots*, from *ergot* (A), the French name for horned rye; they consisted chiefly of men and boys, the number of women and girls being very small. The first symptom was a kind of drunkenness, then the local disorder began in the toes, and thence extended sometimes to the thigh, and the trunk itself, even after amputation, which is a good argument against that operation before the gangrene is stopped.

In the year 1710, the celebrated Fontenelle describes a case in the History of the Academy of Sciences of France, which exactly resembles that of the poor family at Wattiflam. A peasant at Blois, who had eaten horned rye in bread, was seized with a mortification which first caused all the toes of one foot to fall off, then the toes of the other, afterwards the remainder of the feet, and, lastly, it ate off the flesh of both his legs and thighs, leaving the bones bare.

Horned rye is not only hurtful to man, but to other animals; it has been known to destroy even the flies that settled upon it; sheep, dogs, deer, geese, ducks, swine, and poultry, that were fed with it for experiment, died miserably, some convulsed, others mortified and ulcerated.