Bacteria 
seaweedy surface, and at once covered it with its glass 
lid and put it aside to incubate. 
In two days there were about fifty colonies of bacteria 
growing upon it, and all the result of that momentary 
operation ! 
It is not surprising to learn from Dr. Kienitz Gerloff 
that in Virginia and Chicago a byelaw has been proposed 
which strictly forbids kissing under any circumstances 
whatever, not because the authorities wish to emulate 
Mr. Dowie, junior, but simply because it is an inherently 
insanitary and unhealthy operation. But the byelaw 
has not as yet been passed, at least so far as we know. 
But, whether one is afraid of them or not, one must 
just live on swallowing millions of germs, drinking 
them by the hundred thousand, and even breathing 
them into the lungs. What we have to do is just to 
trust to those white blood corpuscles which patrol our 
bodies, and to hope that they will succeed in over- 
coming and in digesting away even malignant or un- 
necessary bacilli. 
It is of course very difficult for a layman to say 
anything at all about the abstruse discoveries of modern 
bacteriology without making mistakes, but the subject 
is far too interesting to be altogether omitted in any 
account of the botany of to-day. 
The losses of mankind in war or by famine are quite 
insignificant when compared with the death-roll due to 
malignant and disease-bacteria, 
But as the years pass on, men are gradually learning 
first to understand and then to get the mastery over 
them. One minute and deadly germ after another has 
fallen under his control, so that the promise of the 
future is distinctly encouraging. 
What has as yet been done is of course but an 
infinitesimal part of a gigantic undertaking. 
54 
