CHEESE MITES, ETC, ^69 



:ase old and new, cracked and empty; larvae, nymphs and perfect 

 mites, cast skins and fragment of cheese, to which must be added 

 numerous spores of microscopic fungi. M. Laboulbene mentions 

 having met with these mites in considerable quantity in some 

 very old linseed meal, that gave forth a very strong ammoniacal 

 odour mixed with that of rotten cheese . . . On different occasions 

 two medical men had sent him and M. Robin for determination 

 specimens of this mite that had been found on wounds that had 

 been dressed with poultices made of linseed meal. On one occa- 

 sion a specimen had been found in urine. Human nature is apt 

 to prefer the most marvellous way of accounting for such things, 

 but it is the part of science to point out how easily the mites 

 might have found their way to the wound or urine in a perfectly 

 simple and natural way. Professor Robin proved by experiment 

 that it was easy to transfer a colony of this species from a cheese 

 to flour where it throve and flourished. The same means answers 

 to inoculate an uninfected cheese — a few mites transferred from a 

 mitey cheese to an old one not mitey will soon make it as good 

 (or as bad) as the other — only in respect of mites of course. 



It is to this species that the following case of dysentery caused 

 by Faites has been referred. Rolander, a student of Entomology, 

 while he resided in the house of Linnaeus, was attacked by 

 that complaint, which quickly gave way to the usual remedies. 

 Eight days after it returned again, and was as before soon 

 removed. A third time, at the end of the same period, he was 

 seized with it. All the while he had been living like the rest 

 of the family, who had nevertheless escaped. This, of course, 

 occasioned enquiry into the cause of what had happened. Lin- 

 naeus, aware that Bartholemy had attributed the dysentery to 

 insects which he professed to have seen, recommended it to his 

 pupil to examine his faeces. Rolander, following this advice, 

 discovered in them innumerable animalcules, which upon close 

 examination proved to be mites. It was next a question how he 

 alone came to be singled out by them ; and thus he accounted for 



