ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 235 



sweet succulent fruits, rarely on unripe fruits or in other localities ; 

 from these it is spread by the wind. By rain or the falling of the 

 fruit it is carried to the ground, where it hibernates, repeating the 

 cycle in the next summer. 



S. apiculatus produces two kinds of gemmae, the typical citron- 

 shaped, and others more or less oval, the former being produced earlier, 

 the latter later. Its power of fermenting is much less than that of 

 S. cerevisice, producing only one volume of alcohol where that species 

 would produce six. It differs from other species of Saccharomyces in 

 this respect, that it does not produce invertin, and therefore cannot 

 invert saccharose, nor cause alcoholic fermentation in a solution of it. 

 It exerts an unfavourable influence on the production of S. cerevisice. 



Etiology of Malarial Fevers.* — Dr. G. N. Sternberg was in- 

 structed by the National Board of Health (U.S.A.) to repeat the 

 experiments of Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli made near Eome, whereby 

 they believed they had discovered Bacillus malarice. 



The author carried out his experiments in the vicinity of New 

 Orleans, where a great number of minute algae, including bacteria of 

 various forms, are found upon the surface of swamp-mud, as well as 

 in the gutters within the city limits. 



Many of these forms may be successfully cultivated in fish-gela- 

 tine solution (method of Klebs), and this fluid, previously innocuous, 

 was found, as the result of inoculation with the organisms, to acquire 

 pathogenic properties obviously due, directly or indirectly, to the 

 presence of the bacteria ; for, if they are excluded, the fluids may be 

 kept indefinitely without undergoing change, and are innocuous when 

 injected beneath the skin of a rabbit. 



Some of the organisms from swamp-mud, gutter-water, and human 

 saliva were found to be capable of multiplying within the body of a 

 living rabbit, and the fluids and organs containing them (blood, 

 serum from cellular tissue, spleen, &c.), possess virulent properties. 

 In other words, an infectious disease is produced which may be trans- 

 mitted from animal to animal by inoculation. There were some 

 which closely resembled and, perhaps, are identical with the Bacillus 

 malarice ; but there is no satisfactory evidence that these, or any 

 other of the bacterial organisms found in such situations, when 

 injected beneath the skin of a rabbit, give rise to a malarial fever 

 corresponding with the ordinary paludal fevers to which man is 

 subject. 



The evidence upon which Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli have based 

 their claim of the discovery of a Bacillus malarice cannot, the author 

 considers, be accepted as sufficient ; (a) because in their experiments 

 and in his own the temperature-curve in the rabbits operated upon 

 in no case exhibited a marked and distinctive paroxysmal character ; 

 (b) because healthy rabbits sometimes exhibit diurnal variations of 

 temperature (resulting apparently from changes in the external 

 temperature), as marked as those shown in their charts ; (c) because 

 changes in the spleen such as they describe are not evidence of death 



* ' National Board of Health Bulletin,' Supplement No. 14. Washington, 

 23rd July, 1881. 11 pp. and 4 pis. 



