210 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



No one now disputes that Malta fever is transmitted by the goat, malaria 

 by one family of mosquitoes, chyluria by many mosquitoes, and yellow fever 

 by one species, sleeping-sickness by the Tse-tse fly. 



Evidence has been brought forward that relapsing fever and kala-azar are 

 transmitted by some biting animal, probably the bug or the louse. 



Before re-infecting man many parasites require to pass through some inter- 

 mediate animal host, the recognition and destruction of which are important 

 matters for the medical man and sanitarian. 



The life history of the malarial parasite in mosquito and man must now 

 be " familiar to every school-boy." The agency of rats and fleas in the 

 transmission of plague is sadly familiar to most of us in India. 



Less well-known is the fact that the embryos of the guinea- worm on leaving 

 man pass through a stage in the body of a small crustacean, Cyclops, that the 

 Liver-Fluke which in Eastern Bengal is not uncommon in man, almost univer- 

 sal in sheep and goats, must of necessity pass certain stages of its life in the 

 common water snail. 



After this introduction we feel no need to apologise for the lay Naturalist 

 venturing a little friendly criticism on the work of an Indian Medical 

 Congress. 



From a Natural History point of view, we must confess we have found 

 little that is new or original. As a work for reference, the volume, a portly 

 quarto of 632 pages, is rendered almost useless by the absence of an index. 

 This want is the more obvious, as the sections into which the Congress was 

 divided, were based on no recognised method of classification, pathological or 

 otherwise. 



We venture to think the editor would have been well advised to have had 

 an index drawn up rather than occupy the space devoted to an Editor's Pre- 

 face " to enumerate briefly some of the principal lessons which have been 

 gleaned from the deliberations," and to appraise after the manner of a Com- 

 mander-in-Chief in despatches, the value of different contiibutions. 



The various authors might well resent as a usurpation the assumption of 

 this role by the one official whose onerous and well-carried-out duties must of 

 necessity have prevented him from hearing the majority of the papers and 

 the criticisms published and unpublished which they evoked. 



We doubt if many physicists will agree with the Editor's commendation 

 of the evidence given in support of a theory that Hill diarrhoea is due to 

 diminished atmospheric pressure. 



In the department of Natural History a paper on Trypanosomiasis and 

 Tse-tse Flies by Captain Greig, an observer -who had lately returned after 

 much practical research in Africa, is " mentioned in despatches " by the 

 Editor as merely " exhaustive." We venture to think our readers will find 

 it the best account written of what is known on the subject at the present 

 day. 



On the other hand the Editor pronounces " important " a paper by Dr. J. 





