ee a ee ee ee ee ee 
Se. ae ha 
ali mies 
las ari 
81 
to our tastes, their lines have not fallen in pleasant places, and it 
is no very savoury task to unearth them.: It is hardly as cleanly 
work as stripping the petals from a flower, or investigating the 
habits of pond life; but I claim for their life-history an interest 
unsurpassed by any being endowed with the wonderful mystery of 
life, and among them may be found a scene of labour as_ practical 
as any in the wide domain of great nature’s harvest field. 
The reading of the paper was followed by considerable applause, 
and Mr. Ashby made some supplementary remarks with reference 
to sewage irrigation at Beddington, raising the question as to the 
transference of some of the forms of life of which he had been 
speaking, from human beings to animals. 
The Present said the paper had opened up a vast field for 
discussion concerning various animals, and their change into one 
final species. He asked Dr. Carpenter’s opinion concerning sewage 
irrigation as bearing on the subject of the paper. 
Dr. Carpenter said he should have preferred to have heard 
remarks upon that view of the subject from others before he made 
his observations upon Mr. Ashby’s clear and suggestive paper ; but 
as the President had called upon him, he would make a few 
observations upon those points which had struck him whilst Mr. 
Ashby was addressing them. Mr. Ashby’s reference to the possible 
effect of the ova of Entozoa upon humanity through the operation 
of sewage farms had not escaped him. It was a subject that had 
engaged a good deal of his (Dr. Carpenter’s) attention ever since 
the sewage farms were established, and he had given the matter 
his serious consideration, for the chances of such a calamity as 
that indicated by Mr. Ashby had been repeatedly brought before 
some of the London Medical Societies, and he had had to oppose 
distinct attacks which had been made upon sewage farms by 
enthusiastic men, both at those meetings and before Committees of 
both Houses of Parliament. The arguments he had used were, 
that although the dangers as indicated might arise, they did not ; 
that the inhabitants of Croydon, from certain well known circum- 
stances, were more exposed to the possibility of such dangers, yet 
that he (Dr. Carpenter) had not met with any evidence that indi- 
cated that the people of Croydon were more liable to be troubled 
by Entozoa than other places; that in fact it was found by 
reference to the books of the Poor Law Medical Officers, by 
enquiries of his own medical friends, and by his own experience, 
that cases of Tenia Solium were all but unknown among the 
natives of Croydon. When cases did occur it was generally (not 
invariably, of course) among those who had lived some time in 
India, or in some part of the centre of Europe, or in Africa, 
