8 4 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
devoid of the molds. These are, in fact, scavengers converting the 
partially decomposed materials into odorless carbonic acid and water. 
Professor Law, some years ago, published drawings of fungi 
which he believed were developed in the milk from germs taken by 
the cows in the water they drank. After careful inspection of the 
figures it seems almost certain that an error was made in the inter¬ 
pretation of these growths. His general conclusion may have been 
correct, probably was, but the organisms he observed were not those 
causing the difficulty. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the germs 
of any fungus of the rank and development of the common molds 
ever passed through the secretory apparatus of any animal. The 
crude statements about iilldia caries (bunt of wheat), etc., being found 
in the blood of cattle, has been often enough refuted. 
In a recent classification of fungi (Sachs’ Text Book of Botany) 
two orders are given including plants of lower grade than any known 
rooMs, which embrace the principal agents in these processes of fer¬ 
mentation and putrefaction of milk and other substances, viz: the 
schizomycetes and the saccharomyces. The former includes the organ¬ 
isms known as bacteria and vibrios, all microscopic, and some of them 
the smallest living things of which we have any knowledge; the 
latter contains the yeast plants. Speaking of those of the first order 
in a wide sense as bacteria, it may be said that they are so minute 
that they were entirely unknown until the microscope reached a 
high degree of perfection, and for this same reason their presence is 
still often overlooked. But it is to these almost invisible objects 
that we must attribute the main effects in the processes of which we 
write. It is to these that contagious diseases are mostly due, if indeed 
to any living thing. I have been permitted through the courtesy of 
Dr. H. J. Detmers, one of the United States’ commissioners for the 
investigation of the so-called hog-cholera, to repeatedly observe in 
the blood, contents of the intestines, urine, etc, of diseased pigs 
great numbers of infinitesimal belonging to this group. Upon inoc¬ 
ulation, or in some cases upon feeding these living atoms to healthy 
swine, the disease was produced time and again. Introducing a half 
drop of blood-serum containing these bacteria into a vial of pure 
milk the latter soon became swarming full of the same objects. 
Again transferring a minute portion of the infected milk to fresh 
material like the first, multiplication of the bacteria took place, and 
inoculation from the second vial in the ear of a pig produced the 
disease in about the same length of time as before. To see the form 
