1879.] Scientific News. 601 
be one of the causes of putrefaction, but this was not quite true, 
and it would be more correct to say that life was the cause of putre- 
faction. If they took proper precautions to keep away from any 
dead body the organisms he had mentioned, it would not putrefy, 
and the sole cause of that most disagreeable change called putre- 
faction was the introduction of a particular form of life more 
analogous to the fungi than anything else, known as Bacteria. It 
was only lately that they had known much about them. The 
Bacterium termo was not more than a 30,000th part of an inch. 
If they took a small portion of fluid of putrefying matter they 
would find millions of them in every drop, darting about as if 
they were fishes. They multiplied with enormous rapidity, and 
after a certain period of activity passed into a period of rest, and 
afterwards the protoplasmic substance broke up, and each spore 
gave rise to a Bacillus subtilis again. Their rate of multiplication 
was so excessively rapid that it needed only one of these Bacilli 
to get into a liquid, and in the course ofa couple of days the 
whole of that liquid would be visibly turbid in consequence of the 
multiplicity of the Bacteria to an extent which no arithmetic could 
express. The importance of these bodies was that they exerted 
a fermentative influence, and they did for the fluid what yeast and 
barm did. It was this fermentative product which gave rise to 
putrefaction, and if they took such precautions as would keep 
out the bacteria, a dead body would remain intact for an indefinite 
period. It was on this principle that meats were preserved for 
an indefinite period by being partly boiled and then hermetically 
sealed in tins so as to preclude the air getting in. If they con- 
sidered what would happen if all the animals that died remained 
where they died until they dried up, they would see what an 
important part these Bacteria played, and if they could all be 
gathered together they would make more than all the rest of the 
animal and vegetable kingdom. But they had a great significance 
which it was important they should all understand. In France 
there was an enormous silk industry, but it sometimes was almost 
annihilated through the death of the silk-worms, and that was 
almost always indisputably caused by a fungus. A disease which 
had all the characteristics of an infectious epidemic resulted in 
consequence of the germs of the fungi being introduced into the 
Bacillus. In vaccine lymph and smallpox there were small minute — 
bodies, and it was found that in these the infection resided, so 
that they were coming to this conclusion, that the whole of our — 
