THE MICROSCOPE. 345 
to grow; it is much cheaper, costing only 4d a pound, whilst 
powdered gum acacia costs 5s. Dextrin dissolves but slowly 
in cold-water, so that a gentle heat is advisable when making 
the mucilage.— National Druggist. 
NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
THE Story OF THE BACTERIA AND THEIR RELATIONS TO HEALTH 
AND DiskAsE.—By T. Mitchell Prudden, M. D. Cloth, 16mo., 
pp. 148. New York. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 
A special gift or “talent” is needed by those who attempt to 
popularize an abstruse subject, otherwise they fail. Dr Prudden 
has that talent in an eminent degree, and his success in prepar- 
ing an intelligible statement in regard to the bacteria is corres- 
pondingly successful. He writes in a pleasant style, his subject 
is presented in an attractive way, and his little book is as inter- 
esting as a romance, with the additional fact in its favor that 
while the statements are astonishing they are true. 
Every reader of popular literature has some indistinct notions 
about bacteria and bacilli, but as to what they are, and where 
they come from, and what they do, the average human being has 
no thought, because he fears they are “scientific and deep, and 
beyond his capacity.” To that class the author has done a favor 
by writing this commendable book, It is replete with just such 
information as any reader of the magazines and papers of the 
day needs to know. It will astonish and frighten him, and per- 
haps do him good by showing him how much danger and misery 
he may escape by keeping himself clean, and taking note of 
what he eats and drinks, and breathes. It may also help the 
persecuted and much swindled house-holder to learn how to 
make miserable in his turn the lives of the plumbers, the sewer 
men, and the officials of the city’s water supply, all of whom by 
their ignorance and carelessness seem to be trying to kill him by 
scattering deadly bacteria through his home. 
The author thinks that these invisible foes have not shared in 
evolutionary changes, but that they still linger in the primitive 
simplicity which is imagined to have belonged to the earth’s 
earliest denizens. That Nature seems to have overlooked them 
adds another element of interest to these minute plants, and 
