218 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
The accurate drawing of' the vinegar eels made by Mr. C. 
Whitley for this paper, so faithfully portrays the little creature 
in its several phases of life, that it appears unnecessary to add 
anything by way of further description. It may, however, 
not be uninteresting to add, that this minute and curious 
eel is not unfrequently made the means of practising 
upon the unwary a gross but very characteristic imposition 
by the advertising quacks who infest this gTeat metropolis. 
A victim offering himself to be fleeced is usually received 
in a well made-up room, lined by book-cases and illuminated 
diagrams of the organic structures in the human body, 
healthy and unhealthy. Instead of the old-fashioned stuffed 
alligators suspended from the ceiling, the Paracelsus of 
modern times ostentatiously parades the most showy and 
expensive microscope obtainable, in closest consultation with 
which he takes care to be found by the patient, just as 
an ant-lion may be supposed to be studying nature as he 
reposes at the bottom of his conical trap, the sloping sides 
of which, made up of the finest sand, prove a very facilis de- 
scensus to his unsuspecting prey, who ventures on the treacherous 
surface. Proceeding to business after some preliminary anxious 
inquiries, the doctor (!) gravely proposes to aid his diagnosis by 
that crucial test, the microscope. The dismay of the poor 
victim may be more easily imagined than described, when, on 
being pressed to see for himself, the state of affairs is revealed 
to his agitated mind, in a mass of wriggling little worms, dis- 
porting themselves in the smallest drop of fluid derived from 
his natural juices. The doom of Herod — “ and he was eaten 
of worms ” — to him needs no more elucidating commentary, 
and if the conscience-smitten patient does not, like the tetrarch, 
presently give up the ghost, he is in a very apt mood to part 
with all the cash he may have about him, in order to be kept out 
of a situation, the horrible nature of which, had it not thus been 
demonstrated to his senses, he could never have conceived. I 
have sketched no overdrawn picture, but rather one, I fear, of 
daily occurrence ; and the manner all this is effected is exceed- 
ingly simple. The smallest particle of sour paste, previously 
placed on a slip of glass, lies imperceptible to the unpractised 
never meant to infer that the vinegar itself contains no organic matter- 
But there is no need to discuss the question of heterogenesis with refer- 
ence to vinegar ; for boiled distilled water alone will, if exposed for a few days 
(under certain conditions of the atmosphere), be found to contain distinct 
types of Infusoria. This fact we discovered last summer, and communi- 
cated to Section D of the British Association. So our scientific readers 
must not suppose that we have been seeking to adduce evidence in favour 
of the theory of spontaneous generation. — Ed. 
