The Microscope. 251 



NEWS AND NOTES. 



The Medical Register reports the case of an Ohio physician who 

 brought home for microscopic examination a portion of the throat 

 membrane of a diphtheria victim, and permitted his children to look 

 at it under a glass cover. Shortly after his entire family was 

 stricken with diphtheria, and since two of the children and himself 

 have died. Five children are yet down with the disease and are in 

 a critical condition. — The Sanitarian. It will be hard to convince 

 the intelligent microscopist that the bit of membrane under the 

 cover-glass was the cause of this sad event. 



Prof. Tommasi-Cbudeli considers it impossible for a man to 

 have malaria without the presence of the malarial ferment in his 

 body {Bacillus malar ice). 



Db. Sternberg concluded that the inoculation of yellow-fever 

 germs, as practiced in Rio de Janeiro and Vera Cruz, is without 

 scientific value. 



An English chemist gives as the common articles used in the 

 adulterations of pepper, long pepper {Chavica Roxburghii), rice, 

 spent ginger, pepperette, olive stones. Under the polariscope the 

 latter cells appear of a light bluish color. 



The business card of an agent, recently in Detroit, announces 

 that he is "special agent and importer of the celebrated com- 

 pounded physicians' pocket lens." 



In his paper, "A List of the Fresh- Water Rizopoda of New 

 South Wales," Mr. T. Whitelegge says: "When gathering aquatic 

 plants in search of any of the unattached forms of microscopic life, 

 they should never be lifted entirely out of the water, but floated or 

 pushed into a bottle with as little disturbance as possible. By 

 adopting this method many more living forms will be obtained than 

 would be the case if the plants were lifted altogether out of water. 

 Directions are also given for preparing and mounting rotifers, infu- 

 soria, diatoms, desmids, etc., using one per cent, osmicacid. — Journ. 

 Linn. Soc, N. S. Wales. 



The last number of the Journal of the Trenton Natural 

 History Society contains a paper by Dr. Alfred C Stokes on " A 

 Preliminary Contribution Toward a History of the Fresh-Water 

 Infusoria of the United States." As this preliminary article contains 

 some 274 closely printed pages, we expect soon to see Dr. Stokes out 

 with a work on the infusoria. 



