692 | General Notes. [October, 
noticed by M. F. F. Hebert, which, descending upon the Gulf of 
Mexico by the valley of the Rio del Norte, strike the north of 
Florida, and then sweep northward along the eastern slope of the 
Alleghanies. ; 
By their geographical distribution and botanical characters, the 
Mexican Graminee are divided very clearly into two groups— 
those which are peculiar. to Mexico or common to it, and the 
Andean region, or to more northern regions, are generally dis- 
tinguished by the slenderness and lightness of their leaves and 
panicles; those which spread into the tropical region, on the con- 
trary, are remarkable by their size, and the amplitude of their 
organs of vegetation and of their inflorescence. The former gen- 
erally inhabit dry and mountainous localities; the latter the banks 
of rivers, and moist places ; some of them extend from the United 
States to the Argentine Republic through 70° of latitude ( Comptes 
rendus June 10, 1878). 
Tue Connection oF BACILLI wITH SPLENIC Frever.—Doubt 
having been thrown on the supposed fact that splenic fever is caused 
by Bacillus anthracis, Dr. Ewart has published in the Journal of 
Microscopical Science, the result of his studies. In the spleen of a 
mouse which had just died of the disease after being inoculated 
with the plant, the Bacilli were found rod-shaped and motionless. 
In a few hours, the temperature being 30° C. (= 91° F.), many of 
these rods began to move actively in a wriggling manner, and 
after continuing in this motile state for some time, they either sud- 
denly or gradually settled down again, and then lengthened out 
into spore-bearing filaments. A mouse inoculated with the 
spores thus obtained, died in forty-eight hours of splenic fever. 
The spores are formed in a similar manner to the Chlamydospores 
of Mucor. 
By Koch and some other observers, these spores have been de- 
_ scribed as germinating at once, and reproducing the rods, but Dr. 
Ewart found that this process was often preceded by the division 
of the spore into four sporules, all of which closely adhere at first, 
but ultimately become free and settle down in colonies. the 
sporules then germinate and produce the rods. The most im- 
portant morphological conclusion which Dr. Ewart draws from 
these other observations is that the Micrococcus, Bacterium and 
Bacillus forms, and the spore-bearing hyphe are phases of the 
same life history. His experiments have been confirmed by other 
observers. 
7 writer in Der Naturforscher, according to Nature, to be character- 
ized by good consistency, and offers perhaps a more satisfactory 
'xplanation of the phen 
