REVIEW OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 
223 
separate cattle, in two or three years at the outside, Chesterfield 
county will be as free from murrain as any mountain county and 
may be placed north of the quarantine line, again opening up its 
summer trade with Richmond. 
The disease, bloody murrain, has been of late years the chief 
drawback to the improvement of cattle and the cattle trade of 
the South. Since its migration northward from Carolina about 
b75°> 000 pf cattle have perished and many men ruined by the 
loss of entire herds. Legislation has since then been enacted 
and re-enacted by the State Legislature and not until last fall 
has there been a law which was competent to restrict the spread 
of the disease in summer time. Should Virginia eradicate the 
ticks from her southern counties traffic in cattle can be unre¬ 
stricted through fear of disease and the quarantine line placed at 
the southern State boundary. 
. One clause in the present law for the protection of domestic 
animals should not be overlooked. This law permits owners to 
raise ticks on their cattle should they so desire, but intends to 
prevent their distributing them where other cattle may become 
infected by them. 
REVIEW OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 
ACTION OF SOME EEECTRICAE MODAEITIES UPON BACTERIAN 
f . • TOXINES. 
By MM. d’Assonval and Charrin. 
After studying the action of electricity upon microbes, the 
authors have tried to find what was the action of this agent upon 
the soluble products or toxines. 
They have used the current, passing always in the same di¬ 
rection and made either continued or intermittent. The elec- 
trolytical action of the continued current has been tried upon 
two toxines : the diphtheric and the pyocyanic. After the ex¬ 
periment, the temperature of the liquid was scarcely above the 
surrounding temperature. MM. Apostoli and Laquerriere have 
claimed microbicide only the positive pole and have attributed 
this action to the chemical products made free at the contact of 
the positive pole ; raising oxygen, chlorides, acids, etc. These 
suppositions were not sustained by experiments ; toxine, in con¬ 
nection with the negative pole, has also been attenuated, as the 
injections made in animals proved it. 
They have made analogous experiments with the continued 
