84 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN's ASSOCIATION. 



devoid of the molds. These are, in fact, scavengers converting the 

 partially decomposed materials into odorless carbonic acid and water. 



Professor Law, some j^ears ago, published drawings of fungi 

 which he believed were developed in the milk from germs taken by 

 the cows in the water they drank. After careful inspection of the 

 figures it seems almost certain that an error was made in the inter- 

 pretation of these growths. His general conclusion may have been 

 correct, probably was, but the organisms he observed were not those 

 causing the difficulty. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the germs 

 of any fungus of the rank and development of the common molds 

 ever passed through the secretory apparatus of any animal. The 

 crude statements about tilhtia caries (bunt of wheat), etc., being found 

 in the blood of cattle, has been often enough refuted. 



In a recent classification of fungi (Sachs' Text Book of Botany) 

 two orders are given including plants of lower grade than any known 

 rooMs, which embrace the principal agents in these processes of fer- 

 mentation and putrefaction of milk and other substances, viz : the 

 schizomycetes and the saccharomyces. The former includes the organ- 

 isms known as bacteria and vibrios, all microscopic, and some of them 

 the smallest living things of which we have any knowledge ; the 

 latter contains the yeast plants. Speaking of those of the first order 

 in a wide sense as bacteria, it may be said that they are so minute 

 that they were entirely unknown until the microscope reached a 

 high degree of perfection, and for this same reason their presence is 

 still often overlooked. But it is to these almost invisible objects 

 that we must attribute the main eff'ects in the processes of which we 

 write. It is to these that contagious diseases are mostly due, if indeed 

 to any living thing. I have been permitted through the courtesy of 

 Dr. H. J. Detmers, on^ of the United States' commissioners for the 

 investigation of the so-called hog-cholera, to repeatedly observe in 

 the blood, contents of the intestines, urine, etc., of diseased pigs 

 great numbers of infinitesimal belonging to this group. Upon inoc- 

 ulation, or in some cases upon feeding these living atoms to healthy 

 swine, the disease was produced time and again. Introducing a half 

 drop of blood-serum containing these bacteria into a vial of pure 

 milk the latter soon became swarming full of the same objects. 

 Again transferring a minute portion of the infected milk to fresh 

 material like the first, multiplication of the bacteria took place, and 

 inoculation from the second vial in the ear of a pig produced the 

 disease in about the same length of time as before. To see the form 



