BEE MANUAL. 259 
and to mix with syrup as food for the bees was recommended, 
and has in some cases proved to be efficient as a cure; but the 
successful application of this treatment was so uncertain, that 
many very experienced bee-keepers in America still held to 
the opinion that the only safe and effectual course to be followed- 
was to stamp out the plague and prevent its ruinous spreading 
by burning everything supposed to be infected—bees, combs, 
larvee, and hives. New and very important discoveries have, 
however, been made, and the bee-keeping world is now relieved 
from much of the dread caused by the apprehension of this 
disease, owing to the 
INVESTIGATIONS OF MR. FRANK CHESHIRE. 
This distinguished English scientist, in the month of July, 1884, 
read a paper before the International Conference of Bee-keepers 
at the International Health Exhibition at Kensington, giving 
the results of his long-continued investigations into the nature 
of this disease, ‘the means of its propagation, and the method 
of its cure ”—results which bid fair to solve all the difficulties 
of the case, and to lay all apiculturists under a deep debt of 
gratitude to the investigator. It would be out of place here 
to give anything like a réswmé of the paper referred to ; it has 
been published at length in the Bee Journals ; but it is neces- 
sary to state as shortly as possible the conclusions arrived at 
by Mr. Cheshire. After mentioning the fact that “science has 
recently shown that all putrefactive changes, fermentations, 
and very many diseases are brought about entirely by minute 
organisms, which are, in fact, rudimentary vegetables,” and to 
which the general name of Schizomycetes is given, divided into 
four genera, micrococcus, bacterium, bacillus, and spirillum, he 
proceeds to point out the chief characteristic differences between 
bacilli and mécrococci in the following words :— 
“Under certain conditions the bacilli produce spores, or seeds (Fig. 
119), which the micrococci never do; while in addition bacilli, unlike 
micrococct, are provided at their extremities with wondrously delicate 
filaments, called flagella, with which they strike the fluid containing 
them, and so swim much as a fish does by the use of its fins; so that 
shape and the power of locomotion sharply divide one from the other.” 
It must be remembered that although the powerful micro- 
scopes now used enable the observer to discern these peculiar- 
