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REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 425 
are communicated by actual contact rather than by the aérial 
transmission of spores; and are therefore usually avoidable by 
ordinary care. With the exception of the varieties of ringworm, 
they are comparatively rare. Some, but not all of them, are par- 
ticularly liable to attack debilitated constitutions. Schools, and 
especially orphan asylums, and barbers’ shops have heretofore 
furnished most frequently the conditions essential to the spread 
of these forms of vegetation. 
A more curious branch of this subject is the occurrence of veg- 
etable organisms within the closed cavities of living animals. 
That organisms usually presumed to be dependent upon some 
parentage for their existence should grow within cavities commu- 
nicating with the external air, as the stomach for instance, is 
really a case of external parasitism ; as the germs might be easily 
introduced by the air or otherwise. Of far different importance 
is the occurrence of such growths within tissues or cavities having 
no external openings. The presence of parasitic animals in the 
eye, brain, etc., and of mould within the thorax and other closed 
Cavities of living animals, has seemed to many to have an impor- 
- tant bearing upon the question of spontaneous generation. At 
the present time, however, when the possibility of the passage of 
Solid particles through uninjured living tissues is believed by 
many if not by most microscopists, the entrance of the germs is 
no longer incredible. 
r. Murie reports three new cases of vegetable-like mould 
found within the thorax of birds. Two of the three birds were 
Own to be ill for a short time before death. No cause of 
death, unless the fungus be considered such, was known. The 
‘cryptogamic growth was in all the cases a greenish white patch 
Upon a thickened and injected portion of the pleural membranes. 
In one case the lungs exhibited spots of lobular pneumonia. 
Under a microscope the vegetation revealed linear, interlaced 
filaments and innumerable echinate circular cells, and under higher 
Powers, oval or elliptical cells distinctly nucleated. Mr. Cooke 
wnted the possibility that these growths were alge : but Dr. Murie 
'S convinced that they are a species of Aspergillus, of the order 
Mucedines, the microscopical elements above mentioned being the 
mycelium and Spores of the fungus. Although such appearances 
Gi been Sometimes considered as of post-mortem production, 
he believes that the spores were introduced by the breath into the 
