134 The Microscope. 



ago. Naturalists say that this fish spawns 3,000,000 eggs in a 

 single season. Starting with this as a basis we proceed, and we 

 find that at the end of ten years the number of fish would 

 amount to 214,449,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 

 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 millions of decillions. " Now 

 suppose," says a recent author, " one hundred fish for each 

 cubic foot, each weighing ten pounds, the cube, therefore, 

 weighing 1,000 pounds — which is six times the weight of 

 granite, three times the weight of lead, and nearly equal to the 

 weight of gold — we should then have thirty thousand decillions 

 of worlds the size of the earth, of the weight of gold, of noth- 

 ing out cod-fish, in ten years. 1 '' 



Our correspondent then proceeds to wonder whether it is 

 not very injurious to health to drink such quantities of bacteria 

 " as are found in all good well or spring water ? " And he fur- 

 ther asks if it would not be better to use distilled water with 

 the necessary salts added to it which are lost in the process of 

 distillation ? 



We reply by asking another question : Why is it that those 

 parties entirely ignorant of the terms bacilli, micrococci, spirilli 

 and the like, eat, drink and are merry, and enjoy such robust 

 health that the bacteriologists would gladly exchange places 

 with them ? 



All of which, and much more, leads us to observe that 

 while the subject of Bacteria opens up a large field for scien- 

 tific research, and while great hopes should be entertained that 

 much practical good will eventually result from such a study, 

 in the prevention and cure of disease ; yet, on the other hand, 

 we should eat and drink, in blissful unconsciousness, whatever 

 is set before us, and not worry over the results any more than 

 we now worry for fear that in ten years the whole universe be- 

 comes one mass of cod-fish. 



When we are told to "eat what is set before us and ask no 

 questions for conscience sake," the writer evidently knew that 

 should our inquisitiveness be aroused we would find ourselves 

 surrounded by such bacterial questions that life would become 

 simply unendurable. 



