THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



479 



Leeds, and printed for private circu- 

 lation in 1892; this portrays his career 

 as an exceedingly versatile man en- 

 dowed by nature with the gifts of 

 artist, poet, linguist and inventive 

 ability, as well as those attributes 

 which caused him to become widely 

 known as a successful scientist. One 

 of Dr. Morton's intellectual feats de- 

 serves recording; while still a college 

 undergraduate he translated and de- 

 signed an artistic monograph on the 

 Rosetta Stone, which was afterwards 

 reproduced by lithography in all its 

 gay colors. His contributions to sci- 

 ence are briefly narrated ; his success in 

 filling the responsible position of presi- 

 dent of the Stevens Institute of Tech- 

 nology for many years, and his great 

 generosity to the same, will require 

 another volume yet to be written. 



THE COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF 

 BACTERIA IN MILK. 



At the last meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Society of Bacteriologists Professor 

 H. W. Conn described a series of ex- 

 periments, the design of which was to 

 determine what species of bacteria 

 develop in milk during the first 

 twenty-four hours and what species dis- 

 appear. The general purpose of the 

 experiments was to determine as far as 

 possible the relation of milk bacteria 

 to the healthfulness of milk. The con- 

 clusions presented by the paper were as 

 follows : ( 1 ) Milk freshly drawn from 

 the cow contains a large variety of 

 bacteria. (2) For the first six hours 

 and sometimes more, there is no in- 

 crease in the number of bacteria, even 

 when the milk is kept at 70°. On the 

 contrary, there is commonly a decrease 

 due to what has been called the ' ger- 

 micide power ' of milk. ( 3 ) In the 

 fresh milk the largest number of bac- 

 teria are streptococci, which come, in 

 most cases, directly from the udder of 

 the cow. (4) During the first forty- 

 eight hours there is a very great in- 

 crease in the number of bacteria, but 

 the number present after one or two 



days' growth is quite independent of 

 the number present at the start. In 

 many cases milk, which when fresh 

 contained a small number of bacteria, 

 at the end of forty-eight hours con- 

 tained a number far greater than other 

 samples of milk which at the outset 

 had a larger number of bacteria pres- 

 ent. (5) During the first forty-eight 

 hours there is a considerable increase 

 in the number of streptococci, fol- 

 lowed by their decrease and final dis- 

 appearance. (6) At the outset the 

 number of lactic bacteria is extremely 

 small, so small as, at times, quite to 

 escape observation. (7) These lactic 

 bacteria are, at least in the series of 

 experiments described, derived from 

 sources external to the cow and never, 

 or rarely, from the milk ducts. (8) 

 The lactic bacteria, though very few 

 in number at the outset, increase far 

 more rapidly than any other types, so 

 that within twenty-four hours they are 

 commonly in the majority, and by the 

 end of forty-eight hours they com- 

 monly comprise considerably over 

 ninety per cent, of all the bacteria 

 present. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS. 



Dr. Charles Kendall Adams died at 

 Eedlands, Cal., on July 27. He was 

 president of Cornell University from 

 1885 to 1892, when he resigned and be- 

 came president of the University of 

 Wisconsin. This post he held actively 

 until 1901, when he retired on account 

 of ill health. 



President David Starr Jordan has 

 been successful in securing a valuable 

 collection of fishes in the Bay of Apia, 

 Samoa, some four hundred and fifty 

 species, many of them new, having been 

 collected. — Gen. A. W. Greely, chief of 

 the U. S. Signal Service, has returned 

 from Alaska, where he had been in- 

 specting the work on the Government 

 telegraph line from Valdez to Eagle 

 City. — Mr. F. H. Newell, chief hydrog- 

 rapher of the U. S. Geological Survey, 

 has gone to the West to supervise in 



