CULTIVATING BACTERIA 



But to-day if you go into a bacteriological laboratory you 

 will find hundreds and thousands of little glass tubes all 

 neatly labelled and stoppered with cotton wool. If you 

 read those labels you will see that the bacteria of all sorts of 

 horrible and loathsome diseases have been captured and im- 

 prisoned. There is the deadly anthrax bacillus peacefully 

 discolouring gelatine ; in another, possibly the germs of 

 hydrophobia may be undergoing a process of taming or 

 treatment. 



Each of these colonies of germs is under perfect control, 

 and in many of them their natural wickedness has been so 

 much alleviated that they are now useful aids to the doctor, 

 who gives his patient a mild dose of the disease in order to 

 accustom his system to resist accidental infection by the 

 original type. 



Yet what has been done already is only an earnest of 

 what will no doubt be accomplished. Every farmer and 

 ploughboy will in time sow his own bacteria ; every dairy- 

 maid will make all sorts of cheese, from Camembert, Roch- 

 fort, to Gorgonzola, by sowing the right kind of germ 

 upon it. 



Man will no doubt cultivate the whole earth in the way 

 that he now cultivates Europe and Great Britain, and will 

 obtain mastery not only over his domesticated plants and 

 animals, but over fungi, bacteria, and insects also. 



Even if man had never risen above the state of the 

 Banderlog of Mr. Kipling, there are other animals which 

 cultivate and even combine together for warfare and con- 

 quest. In some respects they are better disciplined even 

 than man himself, and they can defy all sorts of mankind 

 except civilized man. 



Possibly if man had not arisen on the scene, these insects 



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