Some time ago, Dr I. B. S. Passi pointed out to me the connexion between the structure of the terms of the α-central series of a wreath product and that of polynomial groups which he had defined and studied. In discussing this problem with him, we looked closely at a paper (1) which I had written on nilpotent wreath products. In the process of this, I found a mistake in Theorem 3·7, the main result of (1). The results in (2) depend onthis theorem. Fortunately, it is possible to obtain a correct version of Theorem 3·7 and to modify the proof in (2) which depends on this theorem in such a way that all the results of (2) remain valid.