PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 
35 
any way from drinking tlie milk, or whether they had been in the 
habit of drinking the water. 
Dr. Bartlett said that there had been no appearance of the disease 
at the farms, and there was no need for them to drink the water from 
the pond, because they had an abundant supply of remarkably pure 
water obtained from the deep chalk. The water from the pond had 
only been used to wash out some of the cans, and for the probable 
reason that it was less trouble to use it than to draw up the well 
water for the purpose. 
Mr. Slack said that this Crenothix bore a great resemblance to a 
minute form of bacterium found in the blood of cattle attacked by a 
splenic disease which the French called sang de rate; and with 
reference to this it had been shown that if any of the blood from an 
animal so affected was injected into the circulation of a healthy 
animal, it was the means of reproducing the disease. With regard to 
Mr. Stewart considering all these things as fungi, he was inclined to 
think that this was a very difficult thing to decide ; for instance, they 
would find in mother of vinegar a great many bodies which could 
hardly be classed as fungi. 
Dr. Bartlett thought that it was evident that the very minute 
red bodies which were found there were real parasites on the yeast 
plant. 
Mr. Slack said he did not refer to these red bodies, but to those 
producing or connected with acetous fermentation. 
Dr. Bartlett said it was on account of the growth of these parasites 
that brewers found it necessary to change their yeast every year or 
two, otherwise there was danger of getting, in place of a fermentation, 
merely certain putrefactive changes. 
Dr. Matthews asked was there any suspicion of any sewage having 
found its way into the water in any way ? 
Dr. Bartlett said that no trace of any sewage was found. 
Dr. Matthews thought that if the disease had really been so 
traced to its origin, and had been shown to thus originate de novo, it 
was of extreme interest, because it had always been thought to be 
perpetuated and transmitted down through countless generations and 
to be traceable to contamination with the matter so transmitted. 
Mr. Slack said it would be remembered that at one of their 
scientific evenings he had exhibited a piece of bone from one of tho 
large fossil reptiles discovered in Sussex, the Megalosaurus BucJdandii ; 
and Mr. Stewart on seeing it, observed that it very strongly resembled 
the structure of bird bone. He had brought the specimen with him 
to the meeting, and also for comparison a section of the femur of a 
turkey, and would place the two under the microscopes upon the 
table for comparison, when it would be at once seen that there was a 
very close resemblance between the forms of the Haversian canals in 
the two specimens. 
Mr. Charles Stewart said that the resemblance to the bird structure 
in these great bird-like reptiles of America had been already pointed 
out, and attention had been called to the subject also by Professor 
Huxley. Certainly, looking at it from a Darwinian point of view, 
D 2 
