THOMAS BOWHILL. 
416 
Salmon should have become so suddenly perplexed in the face 
of the u evidence furnished by him which was all that could 
reasonably be required to decide a scientific question of this 
kind; and which was apparently backed up by the most positive 
inoculation experiments. 
But alas for mortal frailty, in the report of 1885, we are sur¬ 
prised at finding that Dr. Salmon no longer considers his micro¬ 
coccus to have any important etiological connection with swine 
plague. He says on page 219, report of 1885, that in at least 
twenty-five cases of undoubted swine plague, pieces of splenic 
tissue, when spread out in a thin layer on a cover glass, dried and 
stained in some aniline color, were found to contain the, same 
microbe in greater or less abundance , and calls attention to an 
illustration which he has marked plate Ill, figure 1, when stained 
for one or two minutes in an aqueous solution of methyl violet, and 
examined with a Zeiss one-eighteenth homogeneous lens, they appear 
as elongated ovals, chiefly in pairs / the greater number present a 
center paler than the periphery. This may be due to a greater 
density or standing capacity of the peripheral portion. The 
darker portion is not localized at the two extremities as in the 
bacteria of septicemia of rabbits, but is of uniform width round 
the entire circumference of the 'oval. Dr. Salmon gives exactly 
the same kind of experimental evidence which he furnished in 
previous years for the etiological connection of his micrococcus 
of these years with swine plague. 
It may also be assumed that he has this time “ furnished evi¬ 
dence which is all that could reasonably be required to decide a 
scientific question of this kind.” It is also surprising that Dr. 
Salmon’s description of the manner in which this microbe of his 
develops in gelatine, and on potatoes, exactly corresponds to the 
above of Dr. Billings. On page 215, report of 1885, Dr. Salmon 
says: “The bacteria manifests growth (on potatoes) by first stain¬ 
ing the cut surface of the potato at the place of inoculation with 
a chocolate color,” which Dr. Billings thinks corresponds near 
enough to our coffee color. He also gives a description of its 
growth in gelatine, on page 214, report of 1885, which exactly 
corresponds to that I have given above for Dr. Billings, which 
