THE STORY OF GERM LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 



BACTERIA AS PLANTS. 



DURING the last fifteen years the subject of 

 bacteriology * has developed with a marvellous 

 rapidity. At the beginning of the ninth decade 

 of the century bacteria were scarcely heard of 

 outside of scientific circles, and very little was 

 known about them even among scientists. To- 

 day they are almost household words, and every- 

 one who reads is beginning to recognise that 

 they have important relations to his everyday 

 life. The organisms called bacteria comprise 

 simply a small class of low plants, but this small 

 group has proved to be of such vast importance 

 in its relation to the world in general that its 

 study has little by little crystallized into a science 

 by itself. It is a somewhat anomalous fact that 

 a special branch of science, interesting such a 

 large number of people, should be developed 

 around a small group of low plants. The impor- 

 tance of bacteriology is not due to any importance 

 bacteria have as plants or as members of the 

 vegetable kingdom, but solely to their powers of 



* The term microbe is simply a word which has been 

 coined to include all of the microscopic plants commonly in- 

 cluded under the terms bacteria and yeasts. 

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