106 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [June 



tainment of one's friends two simple aquaria will be 

 found convenient. First, for vinegar eels, pour into a 

 wide-mouthed bottle some pure cider vinegar already 

 infested with the anguilullsB ; to this add a spoonful of 

 boiled starch ; watch the bottle from time to time and 

 add. vinegar to supply evaporation. Fungus may form 

 on the top. Touch this to k glass slip, remove the 

 fungus, cover the slide and examine. A great sight of 

 hundreds of writhing eels will be displayed. 



Filterings of the Water Supply. — Pour the filter- 

 ings into a conical glass or beaker. Ke-enforce the 

 supply with new filterings, at least once a week. One 

 may thus keep a supply on hand for years. The glass 

 or beaker will have a deep sediment of diatoms and 

 desmids which will furnish food and oxygen to the 

 animals in the super-natant water. Here one may study 

 the survival of the fittest as one set of prevailing infu- 

 soria disappear and will be superseded by another. 

 The starch diet will fatten the vinegar eels and render 

 them easy for manipulation. An inch objective with a 

 C or D eye-piece will exhibit the anguillulse to good 

 advantage. 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP 



Medical Microscopy. — The chief medical officer of the 

 U. S. army says : While scientific medicine could not exist 

 independently of the fundamental branches, they simply 

 constitute the basis upon which the superstructure has 

 been reared, to a large extent during the last half of the 

 present century. The histological changes which occur 

 as a result of various disease processes, were unknown 

 and unknowable in advance of the invention of the com- 

 pound microscope, and the same is true as regards the 

 aetiology of infectious diseases. The discovery of the an- 

 thrax bacillus (1850) and the demonstration of its aetiolog- 



