cii Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [Feb., 1915. 
sos introduced some 12 years ago. It is a fact that pe ee 
were caught in the cellars and sewers of Glasgow for two years 
sbseqent to that small outburst of the disease among the human 
habitants, and yet no further — paint occurred. oon rats there 
were living meus from man, not ry bedroom as they do i 
India. Here, once yoni we see rae tinpesbtnice of a ag ne of 
Biology to ss medical man. 
FIGHTING PLAGUE. 
When plague first enters a District it does not pdora men, . a 
away. 
and it is + soda _— ave been exterminated, or driv 
io rats have the migrate in such cae tae it Salas to 
Having catablished the connection of rats with plague, the fur- 
ther Renee arose. How did this —— we get from the rats 
gain, circumstantial eviden mulated from an epi 
Neca loetiel study of plague gave the eins we were in search of, and the 
working out of the connection between rat fleas and plague was one of 
the main achievements of the Plague Laborat ee in ia of which I 
had the satan to be the oe ne that p' 
go y fri 
The of workin sa Major Glen wget the 
present sea Darscigt of that iets may well yled ‘‘ar 
of medicine.” In the oer of his study of the rats of Bombay, Majde 
Liston soon discovered that the flea heat of these rats differed from 
those of either man or of hike a dogs 
THE FLEa, 
N ya phetiafeae& was at this time known of fleas from the natural- 
s point of view, so Major Liston submitted his specimens to the 
Hor’ble Mn Charles Rothschild, the greatest living authority on the 
pa oasis eis and he identified the Bom bay rat flea as Pulex te as now 
n Xeni etic la Cheopis) a flea first found by him in Egypt (lence the 
tin an w known as the commonest rat-flea of the hotter Tore 
aa 
s the naturalists among you know, parasites of one species of 
animal will not readily attach Niaieclven to those of a widely different 
species. Hence the question arose :—Will Xen a Cheopis bite man? 
This question Liston was enabled to answer in the affirmative by the 
om 
matter Liston found that the animals, and especially those that wn 
sick, were,infested with fleas,though as a rule none are to be found 0 
guinea pigs. On enquiry it was sipecammogten _ Se rats had ea 
been picked up near the — a pig cages came to the con 
clusion that, in the absence of their anal a reg ae fleas had attacked 
as astoni 
rt were rat-fleas. ~ certain proportio? 
of these i. uaa bacillt were found on dissectio 
