PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE, 
219 
urine of a healthy man is free from germs, but in the majority of 
cases it meets with different kinds of germs at the orifice of the 
urethra, or in the air in the neighbourhood, during its emission. He 
also described the very simple apparatus which he had employed 
in repeating Dr. Bastian's experiments, in which he was aided by 
MM. Joubert and Chamberland. 
An American Infusorial Stratum. — In a late number of the ' Pro- 
ceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History,' Mr. Charles 
Stodder states that Mr. R. B. ToUes examined the stratum as it is 
exposed in a ravine on the west side of Shockoe Hill, near Richmond, 
and obtained specimens at the depths, 5, 7 J, 10, 11, and 14 feet below 
the top of the bank, and also from the north side 40 feet below the 
top, from a bed which was apparently a continuation of the 14-feet 
bed, the hill being higher on the north side. The lower layer con- 
tains 50 to 80 per cent, of organic forms, the uppermost about 20 per 
cent. The species below this top layer vary but little ; while in that 
they are partly different in species, and the frustules are less broken. 
The species of diatoms peculiar to it are : Coscinodiscus perfot-atus, 
Aulacodiscus crux, Eupodiscus Bogersii, and Masiagonia actinoptychus. 
Mr. Stodder gives a list of the species afforded by the several beds. 
Dr. Tyndall and Dr. Bastian before the French Academy. — The 
' Comptes Rendus ' of July 31 contains the following extract, which 
is made from two letters sent by Dr. Tyndall to M. Dumas : — 
" M. Tyndall writes to M. Dumas on the 26th of July from Brigne, in 
the canton of Valais, that he has been surprised to learn from the 
' Compte Rendu ' of the 10th of July that Dr. Bastian points him out 
as bearing evidence to the exactitude of his experiments. He says 
that he finds, on the contrary, that at a temperature of 50° Centigrade, 
furnished by the Alpine sun, nothing supports Dr. Bastian's ideas. 
All that Dr. Bastian alleges in favour of spontaneous generation fails 
to manifest itself. In a second letter, dated July 29, M. Tyndall, 
after having read M. Pasteur's reply to Dr. Bastian, gives his entire 
adherence to our colleague [M. Pasteur], and. calls on all enlightened 
persons to banish from science this doctrine of spontaneous generation, 
which has nothing whatever to support it." 
The Characters of the Blood in Anoemia. — This has been carefully 
gone into by M. G. Hayem — whose blood-measurer, our readers will 
remember, we exhibited at the soiree of the Royal Microscopical Society 
— who draws the following conclusions from his paper before the French 
Academy of July 17. We may mention that he arrives at a result 
quite different from that of Dr. Wharton Jones — viz., that there is no 
relationship whatever between the red and white corpuscles of the 
blood. The conclusions are : — (1) The red globules are very al- 
terable elements ; (2) It results from their alterations, in chronic 
anssmia, that their feebleness of colour or of their power of colouring 
the blood and the defect of concordance between this colouring power 
and the number of coloured elements, are the only two essential 
characters of anaemia ; (3) That if in the anaemia the total mass of 
