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AN INSECT TRANSMITTER OF CONTAGION. 



Insects, particularly our common household species, are frequently 

 accused of being the agencies of transmission of contagious diseases. 

 The House Fly, Blue-bottle Fly, Mosquito, the Bed Bug, and the so- 

 called "Yellow fever Fly" are often under suspicion, and occasional in- 

 stances of suspected cases are mentioned in the daily press and in med- 

 ical journals. The following, from the Medical Becord of September 17, 

 1892, is interesting, if true: 



Bedbugs, according to Dr. Dew^vre, may be carriers of tuberculosis contagion. 

 His attention was called to this possibility by a case of tuberculosis occurring in a 

 young man who slept in a. bed formerly occupied by his brother, who died of the 

 disease. The room had been thoroughly disinfected, but the bedstead had for some 

 reason escaped this salutary process. Dr. Dewevre observed that the young man 

 had been bitten by the insects, and, securing some of them, found them full of tuber- 

 cle bacilli. He afterward put some presumably healthy bugs in contact witb tuber- 

 culous sputum, and was able to obtain from them, several weeks later, some excel- 

 lent cultures of tubercle bacilli. The bugs seemed lively, however, and had no cough, 

 night sweats, or other of the familiar clinical symptoms of the disease. 



A SCALE INSECT ON THE KAROO BUSH. 



The Agricultural Journal, of Cape Colony, in its issue of September 

 8, 1892, records the occurrence of a new scale insect in great numbers 

 on a fodder plant known as the Karoo Bush, at Eland's Drift, in the 

 southeastern province. Mr. P. Troskie, who sent specimens to the local 

 Department of Agriculture, wrote in July that, in spite of abundant 

 rains, the Karoo looked as though suffering from a heavy drought. 

 The specimens were examined at Cape Town by Mr, Peringuey, who 

 determined them as belonging to Ceroplastes, and who advised the 

 burning of the bushes on a large scale as a palliative. The waxy cov- 

 ering of the insect, it is thought, will aid in this destruction by fire, 

 while as the bushes were already dead at the time of writing they 

 would be of no further use as fodder and would at the same time burn 

 more readily. 



THE SILK OF SPIDERS. 



In the Revue des Sciences Katurelles a^ypUqueeH for March, 1892, there 

 is a paper by Eev. P. Camboue on the silk of spiders. After giving a 

 history of the attempts to obtain and use the silk of spiders, he gives 

 some interesting experiments of his own, made on a large orb-weaving 

 spider of Madagascar, Nepliila madagascariensis Vinson. He finds that 

 the spider furnishes the most silk after she has laid her eggs. From 

 one spider there was obtained in twenty-seven days nearly four thou- 

 sand meters of silk. The silk was of a golden-yellow color. He gives 

 the plan of an apparatus for winding the silk, which, however, as he says, 

 is imperfect. Nothing, however, was done as to the raising and keeping 

 of the spiders in large numbers, undoubtedly the most serious ques- 

 tion. — Nathan Banks. 



