*jCraL.*janTil7a'] Cultivation of Microscopic Fungi. 23 



"the cow fed on the dry food lost flesh," on the "wetted food 

 gained in condition." They consumed forty pounds of smut in 

 three weeks, the appetite being voracious. Thus we find how much 

 we have to learn amongst the diseases of cattle, and how such 

 important investigations amongst inferior beings may tend to 

 unshroud the contagious, endemic, and epidemic maladies that 

 enchcle ourselves. We have paid too little attention to the excreta 

 in large and small communities, and here we see opened before us, 

 by vast and devastating results, an inquiry of how far the state- 

 ment that the Texan or splenic fever, "an enzootic disorder, pro- 

 bably due to the food on which Southern cattle subsist, whereby 

 the systems of these animals become charged with deleterious 

 principles, that are afterwards propagated and dispersed by the 

 excreta of apparently healthy, as well as obviously sick, stock," 

 may prove correct ; and whether, under a constant inquiry relative 

 to zymotic diseases generally, the importance of experimental 

 development of fungi might not be more seriously urged in this 

 and other countries. 



Dr. Gamgee says that the spring grasses, after the frosts of 

 winter have killed the old ones, are healthy, and continue so unless 

 Texan or Florida cattle are again driven over them. Mr. H. W. 

 Eavenel, the accomphshed botanist of South Carolina, who accom- 

 panied Dr. Gramgee, found no parasitic fungi on the young grasses 

 or hay at the time of their visit, that could in any way account 

 for the disease, nor did he find the coniothecium Stilesianum which 

 Hallier suggested should be "looked for in the food of the wild 

 bullocks." 



Besides the foregoing brief notice of the methods employed by 

 Drs. Billings and Curtis, it is necessary to allude shortly to another 

 which may yet have very important bearings in the solution of 

 some points difficult to study ; they carried out a series of experi- 

 ments in reference to the passage of " bacteria, vibrios, and 

 molecules, either single or in chains (Monas, Microzymas, Micro- 

 coccus, Leptothrix, Zooglea, and Scliizomycetes of various authors)," 

 through thoroughly moistened filtering paper, while, as originally 

 shown by Mitzscherlich, " yeast cells will not pass," and that none of 

 the aforementioned bodies pass through vegetable parchment, though 

 this is open to the passage of fluids ; the apparatus used being 

 simply a test-tube open at both ends, one end is now closed by doubled 

 strong filtering paper, tied by waxed thread, which end is rested on 

 a glass rod inside a four or six ounce glass beaker, rimmed, and 

 after certain precautions the fluids for operation were placed, the 

 one in the beaker, the other, the putrefying or fermenting fluid, in 

 the tube, and the beaker finally closed by hghtly stretching and 

 fastening sheet rubber over the top : the solutions and slides, pre- 

 pared with the same fluids, were very numerously varied ; putre- 



