The Microscope. 215 



of these insects; how easily the air of respiration, or the food and 

 drink, may be thus polluted and infected. It is known that the 

 geiTns of the tubercle bacillus have great tenacity of life. These 

 observers also indirectly strengthen the belief that the suitable soil 

 is quite as essential to the development of tuberculosis as the suit- 

 able seed, otherwise the disease would inevitably be far more 

 common even than it is. 



Spillman and Haushalter, as a practical deduction from these 

 investigations, insist on the importance of thorough disinfection of 

 the spit-cups of tuberculosis patients, by means of strong solutions 

 of phrenic acid or corrosive sublimate. — Boston Med. and Surg. 

 Journal. 



New Rotifers. — Ludwig Plate describes, in the seventh volume 

 of the Naples Mittleilung, some new ectoparasitic Rotifiers from the 

 Gulf of Naples. They belong to the family Seisonidse, and, like all 

 the other members of the group, occur attached to Nebalia. The 

 forms described, four in number, belong to the new germs Parasei- 

 son, which is characterized by an absence of intestine, and has the 

 wheel either as in Seison or reduced to tactile bristles, or, lastly, 

 entirely absent. The other genera of the family — of which a 

 synopsis is given — are Seison of Grube, with two species, and Sac- 

 cobdella of Van Beneden and Hess, with a single species. — Amerca^i 

 Naturalist 



Gelatin Culture Test for Micro-organisms or Water. — Dr. 

 Charles Smart, U. S. A., concludes, in the Philadelphia Medical 

 Neius, an extensive consideration of the micro-organisms of water 

 with the following remarks in reference to the gelatin culture- test, 

 which he believes to be valuable only in its doubtful promise for 

 the future: "At present," he says, "in the hands of the sanitary 

 inquirer, it gives but little information, and that little is surrounded 

 on all sides by interrogation points. In the laboratory of the 

 scientific investigator new methods may be discovered by which 

 pathogenetic germs may be isolated and identified; but until that 

 time arrives the sanitary analyst must depend upon the chemical 

 results as translated in each particular instance by the aid of the 

 ascertained sanitary environment of the water, and however much 

 he may cultivate the microbes, he should not forget to inspect that 

 other field of microscopic life (nostoc sytricha, kerona, algae, etc.) 

 to which reference was made at the beginning of this paper." 



