328 BACTERIOLOGICAL NOTES, 



I can offer the following experiment. On the 6tli June, 1887, 

 a number of sterilised silk-threads were soaked with fresh leprosy- 

 blood, of the same origin as that from which samples for cultivation 

 were derived (see above), and placed in sterile, cotton-wool stoppered 

 test-tubes. Those which were steeped in the blood exceedingly 

 rich in bacilli, were used, soon after my return to Sydney, for 

 inoculating a guinea-pig and three house-mice. The guinea-pig, a 

 full-grown specimen, received some of the silk-threads in a small 

 subcutaneous pouch made at the inner side of the left thigh. At 

 the point of inoculation there was noticed, after some time, a 

 small hardened mass, which, however, disappeared again gradually. 

 The animal was not any further operated upon. It is alive up 

 to the present (that is, after two years), and never showed any 

 symptoms of disease. 



The three mice received one silk-thread each subcutaneously at 

 the root of the tail. They died within about a month, without 

 exhibiting, at the post moi'tem examination, anything that looked 

 suspicious. Leprosy-bacilli were not found. 



2. — On " Air-gas " for Bacteriological Work 



When, a year ago, the Intercolonial Commission, appointed to 

 inquire into, and report on schemes for the extermination of 

 rabbits in Australasia, decided to erect a laboratory on a little 

 island (Rodd Island) in a western portion of Port Jackson (called 

 Iron Cove), in order to have certain infectious diseases tested, 

 the question arose as to how this laboratory should be supplied 

 with gas. Although the Island is only a few hundred yards 

 from the mainland, where ordinary coal-gas was already in use, 

 it was considered as too hazardous to conduct such gas across to 

 the Island, on account of the formation of the bottom of the water 

 at that place. The only way, therefore, to get out of the difficulty, 

 was to manufacture the required gas on the Island itself. After 



