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THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF OUR METALLIC MONEY. 



By E. Blatter, S.J. 

 (Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 16th March 1905). 

 Some time ago, I was asked by a friend to examine some specimens 

 of our current coins with a special view to plague bacilli. Fulfilling hi s 

 wish I subjected a good number of pieces to careful examination. I 

 detected a great variety of things belonging both to the animal and 

 vegetable kingdom, as well as to the inorganic world. Though I did 

 not succeed in satisfying my friend with these results, as I did not 

 observe a single specimen of that plague-engendering organism, I 

 nevertheless might interest some of the readers of this journal by a short 

 determination of the plants and animals belonging to the flora and fauna 

 of our metallic money. 



I need not say that in this examination I made use of the common 

 ways of sterilisation, of culture media, and the different methods of 

 staining which are necessary for the exact study of the micro-organisms. 



I began with scratching a small particle from the surface of a coin. 

 Examining it in sterilized water with a low magnifying power I could 

 not distinguish anything but a brown, dark, untransparent, shapeless 

 mass, and some cylindrical bodies protruding on the surface of that 

 conglomerate. I crumbled the object, and now the single pieces had 

 changed colour entirely, looking yellowish and showing a granular 

 structure. Using a power of 525 I could easily detect the nature of 

 those elongated bodies. In this and the following cases small portions 

 of hair were observed, and amongst these especially the roots were of 

 frequent occurrence. This is quite natural, as the root of each hair is 

 lodged in the follicle which descends into the subcutaneous fat, and is 

 thus surrounded by a more sticky substance than the shaft. Sometimes 

 intimately connected with the hair follicles, sebaceous glands were 

 observed. As the hairs taken from the different parts of the body all 

 show certain characteristic peculiarities, it was not difficult to trace 

 the origin of the various particles. In this way I detected hairs which 

 are found on the head, on the arm, in the arm-pit, in the nose, on the 

 eye-brow. With a higher power I could even distinguish single 

 cortical scales which cover the long fibrillated cells of the hair. A 

 power of 1,000 disclosed the presence of parasitic fungi and of a mite, 

 called iJeinodex folliculorum ho minis, which seems to choose the hair 



