542 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
exceedingly thin circle of glass, about fin. in diameter), 
and making an examination by a |in. objective, or 
any higher power, we find it to contain countless 
swarms of very minute bodies, which dance in the 
field with a lively Brownian movement. Magnified 
500 diameters, they appear as at E, Plate I. 
These, before the investigations I made in 1884, were 
known to be associated with foul brood, and were sup- 
posed to be micrococci, in consequence of reported 
experiments made in Germany some years before by 
Dr. Schonfeld, of whose account space will only permit 
a very short summary. He states that, having procured 
some foul broody matter — i.e., the brown material just 
referred to — he, by a simple contrivance, aspirated air, 
which he passed over the foul broody mass, through 
cotton wool, which then he found full of micrococci. 
He adds, that this cotton wool being spread over the 
cells of a comb in which larvae were advancing, the 
latter took the disease, and died with their bodies filled 
with micrococci; and that lastly, having infected larvae 
of Musca vomitorza, they not only died crammed with 
micrococci, but these micrococci communicated foul 
brood to previously healthy larvae in the bee-hive. 
These experiments were accepted as so conclusive 
and satisfactory, that for ten years they were quoted 
as authoritative ; but many observations, which could 
not be reconciled with commonly-received ideas re- 
specting this malady, induced me, in 1884, to accept 
an invitation to address an International Congress of 
Bee-keepers on the subject, and to attempt to repeat 
Schonfeld’s experiments, with such additions or modifi- 
cations as might seem most suitable to my purpose. 
