aa Den iin | PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 319 
which, may be, were fragments of organic or inorganic matter, or 
monads, or germs, according to the fancy or theory of the observer. 
Not feeling quite satisfied as to the purity of the water used, he eva- 
porated a drop of it on glass. Placing that under the microscope, he 
beheld at once a collection of the same organic matter and minute 
bodies that he first supposed he had obtained from the air. This put an 
end to the use of filtered water. He then obtained from a friend a 
sample of carefully distilled water, which had been, however, distilled 
amonth. Testing that in the same way, he found the same things 
more abundant even than in the filtered water. Another sample, also 
distilled some weeks, but kept with great care by Prof. J. Bacon, of 
Boston, U.S., gave precisely the same results. A third trial—on a sample 
freshly distilled, expressly for him, from a perfect apparatus, entirely 
copper and tin, the steam nowhere coming in contact with glass—also 
gave organic fragments, looking like degenerated or decaying epithe- 
lial cells, as before, and vast numbers of the minute bodies, =,},,th 
OF +odooth of an inch in diameter. Although nothing could be seen 
by the eye in the water in a bottle (a bottle has considerable magni- 
fying power on its fluid contents), yet there was sufticient deposit 
from one drop on the glass slide to be distinctly visible. These 
results indicate that no reliance is to be placed on any conclusions or 
inferences to be drawn from any experiments yet reported, as to the 
existence of organic ‘germs’ in the atmosphere, where the medium 
of collection or examination was water; and when glycerine is used, 
we cannot follow any development of the supposed germs to ascertain 
their nature. The plan proposed by Dr. R. L. Maddox, in the June 
number of the ‘ Monthly Microscopical Journal,’ seems to be the most 
reliable, but even that is not absolutely certain. The question now is, 
is it possible to obtain in any manner absolutely (optically—not 
chemically) pure water ?” 
Infusorial Deposits in America.—A paper was lately read (May 16) 
before the New York Lyceum of Natural History, “On the Ancient 
Lakes of Western America: their Deposits and Drainage.” After 
the conclusion, Professor A. M. Edwards made some remarks on 
the microscopical examination of the fresh-water Infusorial deposits 
of the West, and classification of these and the marine strata, con- 
taining microscopical organisms which he had adopted. Besides the 
recent deposits, made up for the most part of muds of both marine 
and fresh-water origin, we have Lacustrine sedimentary deposits, now 
forming in lakes and ponds, and which belong to the present or Post 
Tertiary Period; the Sub-Plutonic or lake deposits of the West, only 
found as yet in that part of our continent where volcanic action has 
prevailed, and the marine deposits of the coast range in California, 
Virginia, and Maryland on the Atlantic coast, Japan, Payta in Peru, 
Moron in Spain, the island of Jutland in Denmark, and the islands 
of Trinidad and Barbadoes, all of which were Miocene Tertiary. <A 
full exposition of this subject would be published in a future volume 
of the California Geological Survey, upon which he was now engaged. 
