Bacteria 



seaweedy surface, and at once covered it with its glass 

 lid and put it aside to incubate. 



In two days there were about fifty colonies of bacteria 

 growing upon it, and all the result of that momentary 

 operation ! 



It is not surprising to learn from Dr. Kienitz Gerloff 

 that in Virginia and Chicago a byelaw has been proposed 

 which strictly forbids kissing under any circumstances 

 whatever, not because the authorities wish to emulate 

 Mr. Dowie, junior, but simply because it is an inherently 

 insanitary and unhealthy operation. But the byelaw 

 has not as yet been passed, at least so far as we know. 



But, whether one is afraid of them or not, one must 

 just live on swallowing millions of germs, drinking 

 them by the hundred thousand, and even breathing 

 them into the lungs. What we have to do is just to 

 trust to those white blood corpuscles which patrol our 

 bodies, and to hope that they will succeed in over- 

 coming and in digesting away even malignant or un- 

 necessary bacilli. 



It is of course very difficult for a layman to say 

 anything at all about the abstruse discoveries of modern 

 bacteriology without making mistakes, but the subject 

 is far too interesting to be altogether omitted in any 

 account of the botany of to-day. 



The losses of mankind in war or by famine are quite 

 insignificant when compared with the death-roll due to 

 malignant and disease-bacteria. 



But as the years pass on, men are gradually learning 

 first to understand and then to get the mastery over 

 them. One minute and deadly germ after another has 

 fallen under his control, so that the promise of the 

 future is distinctly encouraging. 



What has as yet been done is of course but an 

 infinitesimal part of a gigantic undertaking. 



54 



