42 

NATURE 
[Mov. 17, 1870 

of the nature of disease will fail to carry out the simples 
directions given to them. Nothing can be a substitute 
for a knowledge of the first principles involved in the 
destruction of “ poison germs” in a family attacked with 
contagious disease. 
What, then, ought to be done in a family when scarlet 
fever, or any other contagious disease, has broken out ? 
In the first place, the entire isolation of the persons attacked 
should be secured. They should either be removed to a 
room in the house to which none but the nurse and 
doctor have access, or the family should be removed to 
some house of refuge or place where the disease does not 
exist. It may be urged that this cannot be done; but if 
it be a mcre question of expense, it should be con- 
sidered whethcr the cost of the deaths, the funerals, 
and tue doctor’s bills of a family of several children, 
and perhaps the futher or mother, may not really, in 
a moiey point of view, be greater than any cost of 
isolation. 
But whether isolation is attempted or not, there is 
ano.her set of facts which must be borne in mind. ‘The 
“poison germs” of which we have spoken can really be 
destroyed. If left alone they cin lead a life of poisonous 
activity. We have the means of killing them—poisoning 
them in their birth, as it were—by certain substances 
whose properties we well know. We cannot here write a 
history of disinfectants, but they are well known, and the 
advertising sheets of every newspaper will afford informa- 
tion with respect to them. The most common and avail- 
able are carbolic acid, permangunates of soda and pvtash 
(Condy’s Fluid), chlorinated lime or soda, chloride of 
zinc (Burnett’s Fluid), chloride of aluminium (chloralum), 
sulphate of iron,and others. These agents have the power 
of destroying the puisonous activity of scarlet fever germs. 
In the sick-room and around the patient they should be 
constantly employed. All the secretions of the person 
affected, whether they come from the nose, the mouth, or 
other excretory organs, should be immediately brought in 
contact with one of these agents. All linen and clothes 
worn by the patients should be placed in a solution of 
one of them. Nurses attending on the sick, and medical 
inen touching them in any way, should not leave the room 
without washing their hands in one of these disinfecting 
fluids. 
Woollen clothing that cannot well be washed should, by 
some agency or another, be exposed to heat. It is weil 
known that a temperature of 212° F., the temperature 
of boiling water, wil desuoy poisoa germs. Woollen 
clothing of all kinds, such as shawls and mantles, men’s 
clothes, as also curtains, Le.l-pulls, carpets, rugs, and beds, 
should be placed in ovens, or by some coatrivance or 
another exposed to a heat above 212%. In St. James’s, 
Westminster, a disinfecting apparaius has been erected in 
the Workhouse-yard, where the various articles mentioned 
can be disinfected. 
Having thus indicated general principles, I must leave 
details. I am convinced that the holocaust of victims 
that we annually offer to this Moloch of scarlet fever 
arises from ignorance, and that a general knowledge alone 
of the facts above stated can suffice to drive from us this 
plague, so disgraceful alike to our intelligence and our 
humanity. 
E, LANKESTER 

SCHIMPER’S VEGETABLE PALASONTOLOGY 
Traité de Paleontologie Végétale. Par W. Ph. Schimper. 
Tome ii. Premitre Partie, pp. 522. (Paris, 1870.) 
HE first part of the second volume of this very 
important work (the first volume of which was re- 
viewed in the first number of NATURE) has just appeared, 
with a quarto atlas of twenty-five plates ; and it maintains 
the high character with which it commenced. In this 
part the systematic description of the families, genera, 
and species, is carried down from Lycofodiace to the 
end of Monocotyledons ; and the same excellent plan is 
carried out, of giving under each principal group its most 
important botanical characters and geographical distribu- 
tion, drawn from living types; thus supplementing the 
excessively meagre descriptions that the fossils afford, 
enabling the reader rightly to appreciate the strength or 
weakness of the evidence on which the alliances uf the 
fossils are foundcd, and indicating the organs or struc- 
tural points most desiderated, and to obtain which collectors 
should search for illustrative specimens. 
The following extracts and remarks will give some 
insight into the general nature of this volume, and illus- 
tiaie the autho’s views as to the relations between many 
of the miost important existing types of vegetation and 
their fossil representatives or allies. 
Dr. Schimper ranks the great recent group of club- 
mosses and their allies, Lycopodinee, as a class, with four 
subordinate families; of which two, Lycopfod.ee and 
Jsoetew, are abundant at the present time ; the other two, 
Lepidodendree and Sigillariee, disappeared before the 
Tertiary epoch, 
Under the order Zycofodiacee he includes two families : 
of these (1), Lycopodiew, which abounds at the present — 
day, and inhabits all latitudes from the equator to the 
Arctic regions, Dr. Schimper recognises only seven fossil 
species, all congeneric with Lycopodium itself, and, strange 
to Say, cunfined (with the exception of one doubtiul species) 
to the coal measures—a most remarkable fact, if capable of 
confirmation ; but, after making every allowance for the 
imperfection of the geological record, it appears impossible 
to admit thata group so well represented now-a-days 
should be absent from all intervening beds, including the ~ 
most modern tertiaries ; and it is a startling proof either 
of the vagueness of the characters by which we ally our 
fussils to existing types, or of the imperfection of the said 
record, Upon the whole, and under such suspicious cir- 
cumstances, we should be rather disposed to doubt the 
fossils being Lycopodiums at all. 
Dr. Dawson’s four species of this order, from the De- 
vonian of North America, Dr. Schimper considers not to 
be recognisable as such; so that, little as his own data can 
tell us of the fossil Lycofodinee, there is a lower depth 
of obscurity still. 
Of the second family, Lepidodendree, consisting mainly 
of arborescent plants, all are extinct: it includes the 
principal genus Lepédodendron, with fifty-six species, all 
carboniferous, and with a host of synonyms, generic and 
specihc :—Halonia, Lepidoploios, Knorria,and Ulodendron, — 
all well known to English paleontologists. Lepaophylla 
and Lefidostrobi he regards as respectively leaves and 
fruits of some one or other of the above. 
To the third fumily, /sve¢eg, which inciudes some fifly or 
Se Pee 
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saa 
