BOTANY. 555 



FEEMENTS AND BACTERIA. 



Most of the very numerous papers on bacteria have treated the sub- 

 ject from a purely medical point of view. Of those having also a botan- 

 ical interest the most important are two papers by Robert Koch. The 

 first paper, Ueber Tuberculose, published in the Berlin Medicin. Wochen- 

 schrift, contains a description of a new Bacillus, which is shown by 

 means of inoculations to be the cause of tuberculous disease, which 

 Koch shows to be contagious rather than hereditary. The second paper, 

 Ucber die Milzbrandimpfung, is a pamphlet ijublished in reply to the 

 address delivered by Pasteur at Geneva, in September, before the inter- 

 national hygienic congress. In his address Pasteur replied to the 

 strictures upon his work made by Koch in the Mittheil. aus deni Kaiser- 

 lich. Gesundheitsamte, issued in 1881. The reply of Koch is impor- 

 tant from a botanical point of view, because, while criticising the inac- 

 curacy of some of Pasteur's investigations, he admits that it is possible 

 by means of cultures to produce a harmless form of Bacillus from a 

 pathogenic form ; in other words, he admits in the present paper what 

 he denied in his paper in the Gesundheitsamte, viz, the possibility of 

 changing the pathogenic character of a fungus like Bacillus anthra^is 

 by changing its conditions of growth, and thus practically acknowledges 

 the truth of the view upheld by Pasteur, Naegeli, and Buchner. The 

 practical method of producing a harmless Bacillus for vaccination 

 from a pathogenic Bacillus may hereafter be considered as at least pos- 

 sible, even if the method at present pursued by Pasteur is not alto- 

 gether satisfactory. In the Proc. Roy. Soc, Dr. W. Roberts states that 

 he collected in glass globes the air expired by patients suffering with 

 phthisic and found constantly bacterial forms. 



The Comptes Bendus contains several references to pathogenic bacteria. 

 Pasteur presented a report on the results of inoculation for splenic 

 fever in 85,000 cases, showing the reduced percentage of death in con- 

 sequence of the inoculation. Pasteur, in conjunction with Chamber- 

 land, Eaux, and Thuillier, reports on the nouveaux faits pour servir a 

 la connaissance de la rage, and Strauss and Chamberland report their ob- 

 servations on cobayas, which seem to show that, contrary to the hitherto 

 accepted opinion, the "bact6ridie charbonneuse" can be transmitted 

 from the mother to the foetus. Richard describes an oscillarioid para- 

 site which is found in the blood corpuscles in malaria. A pathogenic 

 Schizophyte of the hog is described by Detmers in the Am. Naturalist. 



In a paper read before the Munich Academy Buchner discusses the 

 experimental production of the splenic fever contagion, and gives an 

 account of the method used by him to transform the infectious into the 

 harmless form, which consists principally in allowing the bacillus to 

 grow in the presence of an abundance of free oxygen. Naegeli, in a 

 paper, Zur Umwandlung der Spaltpilzformen, emphasizes the fact that 

 the species of bacteria cannot be distinguished bj' their form, but can 



