BACTERIA 



all other living things they must have parents. 

 What probably took place at the beginning of the 

 world we cannot consider here but one thing is cer- 

 tain that, at the present day, no living matter is pro- 

 duced from non-living matter; "life from life" is 

 the only theory that will stand scientific tests and 

 this has been the case ever since the simplest micro- 

 scopes were thought of and thousands of years 

 before that. Any substance, however liable to 

 decay, if rendered germ free and kept germ free, 

 will retain its fresh condition indefinitely. Could 

 bacteria or germs, call them what you will, simply 

 happen it would be useless attempting to fight 

 against them. 



Bacteria are everywhere. In the water we drink, 

 in the milk, butter, cheese and in dust. We cannot 

 avoid them, try as we will; it is fortunate, there- 

 fore, that the majority are harmless. You may be 

 surprised that, with this ubiquity, you have never 

 seen one. When, however, you learn that most of 

 them are only about twenty-five thousandths of an 

 inch long and that a thousand million of them could 

 be packed comfortably into a little box, whose sides 

 measured but a twenty-fifth of an inch in length, 

 it is not really so surprising after all. Being so 

 small, the activities of a single bacterium are in- 

 significant; that "union is strength" was never 

 better exemplified than amongst these lowly plants. 

 There are no male and female bacteria, in the 

 majority of cases they increase by splitting, in fact 

 they are often called splitting plants. The change 



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