ANIMALCULAR LIFE. 147 
ries, he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of crea- 
tion, and will derive not only great instruction from studying 
the ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest walks, but great 
material advantage from stimulating her productive energies in 
provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever inaccess- 
ible, utterly barren.* 
* The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition of 
semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action, are now 
ascribed by many chemists to vital processes of living minute organisms, 
both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological as well as to 
chemical forces. . Even alcohol is stated to be an animal product. The whole 
subject of animalcular, or rather minute organic, life, has assumed a new and 
startling importance from the recent researches of naturalists and physiolo- 
gists, in the agency of such life, vegetable or animal, in exciting and commu- 
nicating contagious diseases, and it is extremely probable that what are 
vaguely called germs, to whichever of the organic kingdoms they may be as- 
signed, creatures inhabiting various media, and capable of propagating their 
kind and rapidly multiplying, are the true seeds of infection and death in the 
maladies now called zymotic, as well perhaps as in many others. 
The literature of this subject is now very voluminous. For observations 
with high microscopic power on this subject, see BEALE, Disease Germs, their 
supposed Nature, and Disease Germs, their real Nature, both published in Lon- 
don in 1870. 
The increased frequency of typhoidal, zymotic, and malarious diseases in 
some parts of the United States, and the now common occurrence of some of 
them in districts where they were unknown forty years ago, are startling facts, 
and it is a very interesting question how far man’s acts or neglects may have 
occasioned the change. See ZVhird Annual Report of Massachusetts State 
Board of Health for 1872. The causes and remedies of the insalubrity of 
Rome and its environs have been for some time the object of careful investi- 
gation, and many valuable reports have been published on the subject. 
Among the most recent of these are: Relazgione sulle condizioni agrarie ed 
igieniche ddla Campagna di Roma, per RAFFAELE PARETO; Cenni Storict 
sulla questione del? Agro Romano di G. GUERZONI ; Cenni sulle condiziont Pisico- 
economiche di Roma per F. GIORDANO ; and a very important paper in the 
journal Lo Sperimentale for 1870, by Dr. D. PANTALEONI. 
There are climates, parts of California, for instance, where the flesh of 
dead animals, freely exposed, shows no tendency to putrefaction but dries up 
and may be almost indefinitely preserved in this condition. Is this owing to 
the absence of destructive animalcular life in such localities, and has man any 
agency in the introduction and naturalization of these organisms in regions 
previously not infested by them ? 
