LADY MONTAGU AND MODERN BACTERIOLOGY. 359 



which is required to have a perfectly smooth surface is placed on 

 huge revolving platforms of cast iron, the surface of which is kept 

 covered with a thin coating of wet sand. The platform, revolving 

 at high speed under the stone, soon rubs it smooth as polished 

 metal without the polish, however, as bluestone is not susceptible 

 of polish. Other stone is dressed by hand by the stonecutters, 

 who tool it with chisels and axes into different shapes. It is also 

 turned in lathes in the shape of hitching posts, columns, and other 

 forms, while it is susceptible of the most intricate carving, and is 

 used at present in many classes of sculptured work for the orna- 

 menting of buildings. Its extreme hardness makes it proof 

 against all atmospheric changes, and it will neither shell like 

 brownstone nor crumble like marble under the action of frost. It 

 disintegrates and explodes, however, with terrific force under the 

 action of intense heat. 



The bluestone formation of New York State lying in Ulster 

 County belongs to the Hamilton period, while that quarried in 

 the other counties mentioned belongs to the Catskill group of 

 rocks of the Upper Devonian age. As far as the writer has been 

 able to learn, minerals are never found in the bluestone deposits, 

 except in the form of oxides. Ignorant prospectors have at times 

 reported the discovery of anthracite coal, which, however, has 

 always proved to be a worthless deposit of organic slate, which in 

 some localities abounds in considerable quantities. It is improba- 

 ble that coal will ever be found in this region, as the stone forma- 

 tions that lie nearest the surface are those which underlie the coal 

 measures of the entire country. 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU AND MODERN 

 BACTERIOLOGY. 



BY MBS. H. M. PLUNKETT. 



IN all the history of modern scientific progress there is no more 

 beautiful instance of the way in which the torch of knowl- 

 edge is passed from hand to hand as generation succeeds genera- 

 tion, each holder adding his increment of light to the flame, than 

 that to be seen in the interlinking of the work of Lady Mary 

 Wortley Montagu and Edward Jenner with that of Pasteur and 

 Lister and Koch, and the multitude of illustrious seekers now 

 striving to reveal to us the whole world of man's microscopical 

 friends and enemies. It is to be noted that in each individual 

 case the mind that was to aid in setting forward the hand on the 

 dial of progress was specially gifted for its work, so that when 

 the new truth was presented to it, it was like the seed that fell on 



