WINTER MANAGEMENT. 265 
subsequently develop. Though the latter, therefore, 
are the essential constituents of the disease, they 
appear to be powerless in spreading the contagion 
until sufficient of a dry crust has been formed to 
enable the micrococeus spores to be carried away by 
the air. Whether this conclusion will lead up to 
an explanation of the uncontagious foul brood, it is 
perhaps too soon to speculate. Schénfeld wrote 
thus, in January, 1874: ‘ Though, certainly, as Dy. 
Preuss rightly remarked, no scientific distinction can 
be drawn between the mild and the malignant kinds 
of contagious foul brood, there is yet so much the 
more decided ground for separating the mild form 
of the uncontagious and the bad form of the con- 
tagious. The former shows itself as a dying off of 
the brood from a variety of causes, but it never 
becomes contagious so long as fungi do not make 
their appearance; the latter is a dying off of the 
brood in the form of a fouling, in consequence of 
accumulated fungus formations.” 
We come then to the method of using the salicylic 
acid, “the great antiseptic virtues of which,” says 
Schonfeld, ‘consist in nothing else than in its 
capacity of killing as with a stroke of lightning the 
bacteria which are the originators of the foulness.” 
As its name implies, it is obtained from the willow 
tree (salix); it is a crystal powder of a sweetish 
taste, and wholly free from danger if administered 
either over the bees or internally. A British apicul- 
turist residing in Denmark, Mr. J. 8. Wood, of 
Nyborg, published in the British Bee Journal of De- 
cember, 1875, some useful particulars which we may 
