antine question. For some years past there has been a disposition on the part of our own working classes to urge the exclusion of the "pauper labor" of Europe, and there has been some wholesome legislation for the weeding out of the least desirable classes. The labor party wants no such half-measures. Its theory is that to keep wages up it is necessary to keep immigration down; and the late outbreak of cholera in Europe afforded a favorable opportunity for an agitation for the suspension of immigration on sanitary grounds. Quarantine regulations have already gone far to arrest the tide, and now comes the pertinent question-cui bono? The subject is treated under two heads: (1) Are quarantine regulations of any avail in excluding cholera? (2) Does the perennial influx of immigrants prejudice the status of the American workman? Both these questions are discussed in the current literature of the month. There is a very thoughtful article by Dr. C. W. Chancellor in the Sanitarian, in which he takes Pettenkofer's view, (1) that the comma bacillus is only one factor in the propagation of cholera, and one that need occasion no alarm if sanitary precautions are observed, and (2) that sanitary regulations being neglected, quarantine regulations are utterly inefficacious in securing immunity. He says:

QUARANTINE DOES NOT EXCLUDE.

"The incidence and spread of cholera have been heretofore governed almost invariably by the proportion of material found ready-made to its taste-that is to say, the number of ill-fed people living in filthy, crowded houses, and breathing a polluted atmosphere. New York fought the cholera last summer by every effort and artifice that science could suggest or energy execute, but in spite of the great energy displayed by national, State, and municipal authorities, the ready material was there, and a dozen or more persons fell victims to the disease. At once it was proclaimed that the fons et origo malorum was several infested ships anchored in the lower bay, under quarantine surveillance as rigid as any that could well be desired. The disease entered the city, but was not communicated from the steerage to the cabin-passengers of the infected ships; and on this it is that we are asked to rest our faith in the tremendous efficacy of quarantine.

There are no recorded facts to show that restrictive measures have ever succeeded in keeping the cholera out of any country or even in staying its progress when local conditions are favorable to its spread. Under such circumstances there can be no parallel to the folly of attributing every outbreak of cholera to infected persons or infected merchandise, and of establishing quarantine restrictions inessential to their object and destructive to com

IMMIGRATION NEEDED, FOR THE SOUTH ESPECIALLY. The writer next enters into an historical account of past visitations of cholera, the futility of all efforts to exclude it, and the certainty of its cropping up where conditions are favorable, and ends by a protest against any measure for restricting the influx of desirable immigrants who are needed for the development of our resources, especially in the New South.

CANADA AND MEXICO OPEN ROADS.

Senator Henry C. Hansbrough, of North Dakota, follows in the North American Review, in much the same strain. As regards the efficacy of quarantine to exclude infection, he argues first that a sea-board quarantine along the Atlantic coast in the United States will not stand as a bar to the entrance of contagious or infectious disease over the Canadian or Mexican borders. He urges Federal control of quarantine regulations, and while he would vest the President with the power of temporarily suspending immigration from any foreign port where cholera or any other dangerous disease might be raging, he holds that "a law authorizing a total suspension of immigration for any length of time whatever, would be wholly unnecessary and unwarranted."

IMMIGRANTS NEEDED FOR THE TRENCHES. "We want immigration in this thinly-peopled country [he says] for our own advantage. The patient, delving European has been the fulcrum, and American brains and enterprise the lever of our great progress. If we hope to continue our marvelous development, we must not turn the immigrant away. The place that he is content to occupy in the trenches cannot be filled by the native American who has moved up to a higher plane and to a more congenial employment. The immigrant built our railroads and opened our mines, and now his children, advancing with the general progress, are teachers in the public schools, and practicing the skilled professions in the cities and villages, while his grandchildren are foremost among scientists, and rank high as authors and statesmen."

The author holds that we should seek to raise the character of our immigrants, and not to reduce their numbers, and to secure this end he recommends a well-digested plan of consular supervision and inspection.

LABOR-SAVING MACHINES.

In the American Journal of Politics A. A. Halbrook takes up the subject, and asserts that neither do the immigrants keep down wages, nor are there enough of them to keep the native American fully employed on a higher plane. He says:

"European labor is not crowding Americans out of work, though the Huns' may be crowding our own people into a class of work which demands more skill, and consequently higher pay. If we were deprived of our European labor, the trainmen, firemen, and engineers would be compelled to leave their cars and engines and take their place among the section gangs.

True, the Poles and Hungarians are crowding out the Welsh and Irish in the coal-regions, but they are only crowding them up; so [he concludes] open the gates and let them come in. They are only labor-saving devices, and the idea that they interfere with the American working-people is only the same false notion which agitated labor circles in years past, that a labor-saving machine is an injury because it appears to throw people out of employment." PROVIDE FOR THE IMMIGRANT'S RECEPTION.

Finally, in the Social Economist, Edward Everett Hale takes advantage of the current interest in the topic to touch on one special phase of it-the reception given to the emigrant on landing, and the measure of interest displayed in placing him. amid suitable conditions for his early development into useful citizenship.

After referring to the general neglect of this branch of the subject, he indicates what might be done, by showing what has always been done by the Mormon Church, and what is now being done by American Israelites to rescue their co-religionists from the hands of the Philistines, and start them on the way they should go.

IN

THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS IN RUSSIA.

N the periodical press of Russia, in public opinion, and in the anxiety of the Government, one sees constant evidences of the general feeling of alarm engendered by the famine of 1892, and in the Preussische Revue for January we find a paper on the subject in which the assertion is made that the result of all investigations has been to demonstrate two very serious facts, (1) that European Russia is overpopulated, and (2) that a terrible catastrophe hangs over a great part of the country-it is being converted into desert. Treating of the first statement, the writer says:

"This may sound paradoxical, but becomes intelligible on a review of the facts. More than eighty per cent. of the population subsist by agriculture. The emancipation of the serfs involved a distribution of the land, which is now divided between large landholders and peasants in the proportion 21:19. The estimated agricultural area of European Russia is 400,000,000 dessjatinen (the dessja is about 21⁄2 acres); of this 190,000,000 are in the hands of the peasants, 110,000,000 belong to the crown, 60,000,000 to private owners, and the remaining 40,000,000 are town and mineral lands. The agricultural land includes pasture and forest lands."

The writer then, estimating the agricultural population at 80,000,000 to 83,000,000, argues that the land is admittedly

simply a child of his age, a creature of his circumstances. Great poets defy the calculations of average or the laws of evolution. They move the minds of men to make the events we note as epochs, as often as they follow after to record events. Such intellectual stir as is known to our time has been inimical to poetry rather than helpful. The hypothesis of evolution, the rationalistic method of inquiry, have done their best to cut the ground from under the feet of faith and idealism. Poetry's killing foe, however, is wealth, and wealth of late has grown beyond the dreams of avarice. Money, which can call into existence many of the arts, which can rear architecture, lay out gardens, which can even greatly help in the creation of music and painting-money has no potency over the proud and disdainful Muse.

"It is ill prophesying when one does not know. The future of poetry is as certain as the future of anything else; but the poetry of the future-to that we cannot give a date or a description. At any moment some poet may by a lucky stroke reveal an unsuspected pocket of golden ore, and the world will be the richer for it. It may be that the circumstances which seem at war with poetic effort are just those needed to encourage and call it forth. Or we may indulge the hope that the increasing wealth and luxury of men may have their usual end, and that corruption and decay may set in and flame forth in colors of such grain and dye that poets looking on will dip their pencils in the hues of sunset and eclipse and bring forth visions to enchant the coming years. Or they may, penetrated with disgust at the spectacle, turn their lyres to hail the dawning of a purer, simpler time, they may sing of new Saturnian reigns and so the circle round.

Poetry is not going to save anybody's soul; that is what religion promises, at least, to do. Poetry is not the art of administering affairs nor the art of expounding prophecy. It is the art which fills our minds with the happiest and loftiest images and impressions; it is the art which makes us more contented with ourselves and more agreeable to those about us. It has its office to inspire, to charm, to console; its business is to show us that the things of life which most assert themselves to be realities are neither so real nor so important as they claim to be. Its future is immane, because when actualities oppress, when utilities task, when, 'tired of all these, for restful death we cry,' we need merely open our book and without effort attain ease, without putting off mortality, have part in the immortality of the sole things which show a semblance of eternal life,-the creations of the divine poets. Ponce de Leon sailed for his fabled Fountain of Youth, but the wiser man is he who reaches down his Homer or his Shakespeare and discovers therein the spring the Spaniard failed to find.'

It is suggested, however, by Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers, in the January number of the Nineteenth Century that great poets perform a vastly more important function than that of simply soothing and rejuvenating the tired spirit. That function he thus states in discussing

MODERN POETS AND THE MEANING OF LIFE. Wordsworth, Darwin, Tennyson-the three greatest Englishmen of our century-have passed away. Greatest I call them, not for personal faculties alone, which are hard to compare as between the many men of genius whom our age has produced, but because it seems to me that these men's faculties have achieved most in the most important direction, in the intuition, discovery, promulgation, of fundamental cosmic law. By cosmic law I here mean, not such rules merely as may hold good universally for matter, or motion, or abstract quantities, but principles which, even if as yet but dimly and narrowly understood. may conceivably be valid for the whole universe, on all possible planes of being. Of such principles we have as yet but three-Uniformity, Conservation, Evolution. We believe that all operations in the universe obey unchanging law. We believe that all matter and all energy known to us are indestructible. And we believe that all physical and vital operation in the universe is at present following certain obscurely discernible streams of tendency, of which the source and goal are alike unknown. The first of these laws lies at the root of all Science; the second at the root of Physics; the third at the root of Biology,

It is not, of course, with any of these three laws that the work of Wordsworth or of Tennyson is connected. They have helped, however, to introduce a fourth cosmic principle. It is most certain that there are still cosmic laws unknown, and of these there may well be some one within range of discovery, which may govern more directly the region in which lie the problems of a spiritual world and life beyond the grave. We shall do well, therefore, to consider whether there be any primary belief held in common by all religions; and if so, whether that belief is capable of being expressed in a form in which it might conceivably be proved by Science to be a cosmical law-a fourth law lying at the root of Psychology, as those other laws at the root of Physics and Biology.

"On the ground of their association with this fourth cosmic law I would claim both for Wordsworth and for Tennyson a commanding place among the teachers of this century. I do not, of course, claim for them a scientific eminence. Yet certain truths, ultimately provable by science, may be in the first instance attained by other than scientific methods. The 'genius' shown in discovery or in creative art may be defined as an uprush of subliminal faculty,' and the rapt absorption of a Newton, the waking dream of a Raphael, the inward audition of a Mozart, do but represent the same process occurring in different regions of thought and emotion. High art is based upon unprovable intuitions; and of all arts, it is Poetry whose intuitions take the brightest glow, and best illumine the mystery without us from the mystery within.' Mr. Richard Hovey, in the February Atlantic, in a paper upon

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS,

"

who has just died, gives his opinion as to the merits of three metrical translations into English of the Divina Commedia," those of Longfellow in rhyme, and those of Cary and Parsons in blank verse.

"Longfellow's version, though occasionally it transfers a line more successfully than any of the others, is in the main perfunctory, and its literalness is carried so far that it frequently degenerates into a 'crib' pure and simple. There is a story that Longfellow used to translate eighty lines every morning before breakfast. I do not know how true this may be, but the internal evidence seems to support it. The product of his labor is a caput mortuum; the categorical statements are all there, but somehow the poetry has evaporated. The result is tedious and uninteresting. Now, the one quality which Dante never had, is dullness, and that is also the one quality the public will never forgive.

Cary's translation has the merit of being tolerably readable. In it, however, the poet suffers a strange transformation. The words are the words af Dante, but the voice is the voice of Milton, or rather of a weaker-lunged man trying to mouth the mighty periods and cæsuras of Milton, and getting somewhat cracked of voice and broken of wind in the effort. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, a creditable performance; only it is not Dante.

66

Each of the translators has his felicitous moments, and succeeds in rendering certain passages with more skill than his competitors. Yet, the relative merit of the translations must be estimated, not by passages, but by the general impression of the whole work. Parsons is inferior to some of the other translators in certain obvious verbal and prosodical accessories. His poem, however, gives probably a more correct impression of Dante in his entirety than any of the others. His versification has the continuity of Dante's, and something of its music. His diction, like Dante's, has that supreme refinement that knows no disdain for homely words and phrases. His style with more inversions than Dante's, has much of the master's severity and swiftness, though it falls short of the masterfulness and supple power of the Italian. Altogether there is more Dante in it than in any translation that has yet been made."

Dante is studied in the chief city of Illinois, we are told by Mr. William Morton Payne in the New England Magazine for February. A good deal has been written of late about the place in which the World's Fair is shortly to be opened, and some curiosity has been expressed as to how much attention is given there to literature. This curiosity Mr. Payne, under the caption,

LITERARY CHICAGO,

undertakes to gratify. He uses the term literature in its broadest sense, including in it clubs and societies, periodicals, booksellers, and publishers, as well as authors, and counting “as Chicagoans all persons who have lived there a sufficient length of time to become fairly identified with the interests of the city." Of the writers named as belonging to Chicago "few were born there, and many of them have lived elsewhere in their later life, but all of them have made their residence there for a term of years, and belong to Chicago as clearly as they do to any other place." He admits without hesitation that Chicago, from a literary point of view, "is not London or Paris, Copenhagen or New York. It is simply a huge aggregation of the pioneer forces of American civilization, in which the literary consciousness is beginning to awaken." Worth quoting is the point he makes that in the growth of a literary spirit in a city, and of the literary productions of the men and women who dwell in it, there are three well-marked stages."

"In the first stage, literature is regarded with indifference or

even with positive contempt. Out of this stage Chicago has fairly passed, although it has not been left very far behind, This fact is painfully illustrated now and then by some recrudescence of the old spirit, such as that which marked the reception of Mr. Lowell when he visited Chicago in 1887. The recollection of this episode, which makes most Chicagoans blush for their city, is too humiliating to be dwelt upon.

The second stage is that of dilettantism, and is characterized by a general awakening of interest in literature, and by the organization of all sorts of societies for intellectual purposes. Roughly speaking, Chicago has been in this stage for the last twenty years. That it has not made the transition to the second stage without <lifficulty is illustrated by the wrecks that lie stranded along its course, and by the curious notions of literary culture occasionally to be met with. There are circles in which to read novels (above the level, say, of the Duchess' or the late Mr. Roe) is to be thought literary' and quite on the heights of culture. In this stage, also, many persons seek to become literary' by the quasi vicarious process of associating with literary people, when such are to be found, or (books being in fashion) by the purchase of libraries and their conspicuous display as part of the household furnishing.

"In the third stage, upon the threshold of which Chicago may be fairly said now to stand, literary production comes to be a distinct factor in the intellectual activity of the community, and the period of clubs and lecture-organizations, and passive literary interests generally, begins to bear its natural fruit. There is, of course, nothing hard and fast about such a classification as has been given, but it provides a sort of clue to a labyrinth hopelessly complex without some such guide."

THE

THE OPERA.

VERDI'S "FALSTAFF."

HE latest opera composed by Verdi, and produced at the Theatre La Scala at Milan on the 9th instant, was looked forward to with special interest on account of the age of the composer. A cablegram from Milan in the New York Cristoforo Colombo, of February 11, thus describes the new work, of which the libretto is an adaptation from Shakespeare by the eminent Italian author, Arrigo Boito:

"Falstaff' is a comedy in the widest sense of the term, and such a thing as a comic opera written by a man nearly eighty years old has not been known since Auber wrote 'Le Premier Jour de Bonheur.'

The curtain rose on a scene representing a room in the Garter Inn at Windsor, in which stood Sir John Falstaff, played by Victor Maurel, engaged in sealing his amorous epistles to Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford.

As the opera went on it was observed that Verdi in this work has entirely abandoned the style of grand opera. Although there are no conspicuous airs, and the music follows the situation and sentiments after the modern manner, every page abounds with vocal melody, especially in the part of Falstaff, which is full of delightful harmony.

Moreover, in the orchestration there is a good deal of melody. This, however, is not intrusive, and the accompaniment never overshadows the music on the stage.

The gay and spontaneous strains charmed all ears, and when the curtain fell at the end of the first act, the artists and afterwards the composer, were called before the curtain, and there was a whirlwind of applause.

"The second act passed off equally well, with like fire and vivacity, as well in the music as in its execution, although in its manner the music is of a character quite different from that of the first act. A composer of comic opera has never written a duet more ingenious and characteristic than one sung at, the beginning of the second act by Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly. Yet the hearers seemed even more enraptured with a subsequent duet between Falstaff and Ford. So the opera continued to the end, the curtain falling for the last time on general and indescribable enthusiasm."

On the other hand, a cablegram to the New York Sun of the 12th instant affirms that the critical verdict on this latest production of the venerable Italian composer is far from being unanimous.

The production of this new musical work lends interest to an account of

THE ORIGIN OF THE OPERA,

from the competent pen of Mr. J. F, Rowbotham,* in Chambers's Journal, for January.

The first .Opera ever heard in Europe was the opera of 'Daphne.' It was performed in the year 1594, and was considered such an oddity by those who heard it, that there were not wanting people to exclaim loudly against the introduction of such a foreign and utterly unnatural drama,' as they were pleased to call it. The absurdity that the performers should sing their lines instead of speaking them, should fence and fight to the accompaniment of music, and even at the point of death should have a chorus standing around them, bewailing in alto, tenor, and soprano their woe, seemed a little too much for the gravity of many people; and the first opera was the butt of jeers, criticism, and ridicule. It was, in fact, a bold experiment on the part of a few cultivated men to revive in modern Europe the drama of the Greeks."

'It was at Florence, Mr. Rowbotham proceeds to tell us, that this experiment was made and the leader of these cultivated men was the Count de Vernio, a wealthy and hospitable man, at whose house were held weekly gatherings of all that was learned and distinguished in the Tuscan capital. The first difficulty met with in reviving the Greek drama was want of space. There were no theatres in Florence, except of the roughest kind, where the mysteries and moralities were performed. The only places ever open to dramatic performances or shows," as we should call them, were the halls of the nobility. In these halls there was no room to put a chorus below the stage and in front of it, after the manner of the Greeks, and so the chorus had to be put on the stage. The immense size of the theatres in Greece-capable of accomodating with ease thirty or forty thousand spectators-made it impossible for the actors to be heard except by wearing masks, which served as speaking-trumpets. Even then, in order to be audible half-way through the immense throng, it was necessary to declaim the lines in a sort of sonorous recitative. The actors were, therefore, compelled to chant their parts in order to make their voices carry the required distance.

"Whenever the actors spoke or rather chanted, in Greek tragedy, the poet made use of a certain metre, called iambics. This metre was supposed, and correctly supposed, by the Greeks to approximate very nearly to the flow of ordinary prose. This was its especial utility. The actor could chant his speeches in a verse which did not violate any ideas of dramatic probability. The music which went in company with this homely form of verse was itself likewise very free and unmelodious, approaching the cadence of ordinary speech rather than that exalted form of utterance which we call singing. The actor, in reciting his iambics, neither sang nor did he speak, but chanted in a sort of halfmusical, half-oratorical tone, being accompanied by occasional chords or notes on the lyre by the chorus, who, stationed before and lower than the stage, could supply the music to the actor's recitation from the same coign of vantage which a modern band now occupies."

Count de Vernio and his friends, of course, had no use for the masks, but wanted to retain the Greek mode of recitation. Various experiments to this end were made in vain, when one Guilio Caccini appeared at an assembly, and declaimed with much art, many passages of poetry reproducing the cadences of the old Greek style, and combining them with the spirit of modern music so successfully as quite to reconcile them to the modern ear. The invention of Caccini took with the assembled company. It was called Recitativo, and it was resolved that in their tragedy, which was to be produced, the actors should employ in delivering their lines, the method of Caccini. Before the opera was ready for production the Count de Vernio removed to Rome to fill an office in the Papal household, so the performance took place in the palace of Jacopo Corsi, a wealthy Florentine. The piece was successful among the cul

tivated audience which heard it.

"But the general public were as yet quite uneducated in the * See THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., No. 15, p. 411.

style, and purely Philistine. The monotonous drawl of the recitative,' as they called it, they could not tolerate. They were firmly convinced that the whole opera from first to last should have been a collection and succession of purely melodious pieces. Antagonism, pasquinade, detraction, did their utmost to discredit the peculiar style of revived Greek music; but the Greeks,' as they were now called, held their own, In fifty years the Opera was established

as the most refined and favorite form of music in all the countries of Europe."

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT SCIENCE.

ARCHEOLOGY.

The Co-Existence of the Mammoth and Man.-Not long since, the distinguished and venerable archæologist, J. Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, published a paper examining the discoveries in Europe which are supposed to prove the contemporaneity of man with the mammoth; and reached the conclusion, that not Only is the evidence inadequate, but for climatic and geologic reasons no such co-existence was possible.

At the last meeting of the German Anthropological Association Professor Virchow quoted Steenstrup's conclusion, and endorsed it, as did also others present. The "reindeer period was the remotest to which they were willing to assign the appearance of man in Europe on existing evidence. The artefacts of mammoth teeth and bones found in the caves were asserted to be from fossil remains picked up by the cave men. Where such artefacts are found in gravels along with mammoth bones, they would say that these gravels are themselves posterior to the reindeer period, and hence contain objects of various preceding periods.

There remains for consideration the delineation of a mammoth on a bone from the Lena cave in the south of France. This was not discussed, being probably considered of questionable origin. In the United States two such delineations have been brought forward. They are both strikingly similar to this French original, which has long been made familiar to American readers through various publications. Both proceed from the valley of the Delaware River. One is on shell and one on :stone. I have examined both originals very carefully, and apart from the vagueness which surrounds the finding of both, for purely technical reasons I believe both to be recent. There still lacks conclusive evidence that man and the mammoth' were contemporaneous in the area of the United States.Science, New York, February 10.

ASTRONOMY.

Time-Reckoning of the Mayas.-A short but carefully studied article in a recent number of the Globus (Bd. 63, No. 2), by Dr. Förstemann, presents some striking facts showing the accuracy .attained by the ancient Mayas of Yucatan in the calculation of time. His sources are the Dresden and other ancient codices, to the interpretation of which he has devoted fruitfully much study. The contents of the Dresden Codex is largely astronomical or astrological, several of its pages being comparisons of the relative times and positions of the heavenly bodies. It is clear that these sky-readers had ascertained that the mean synodical revolution of Venus is 584 days, which is correct to a very small fraction. They had fixed the revolution of Mercury at 115 days, and it is probable, but not quite certain, that they had rightly estimated the revolution of Mars at 780 days. Jupiter and Saturn they did not study, or, at least, take into these calculations.

Not less surprising was the accuracy they reached in measuring the lunar month. They had by their observations reduced it to 29.526 days. This is about five minutes in the month too short, as the true synodical revolution is 29.53 days. For this difference, intercalary days would be required at certain .epochs.

It is probable from this that the Mayas were ahead of any

other American stock in the measurement of time, exceeding even the Mexicans; though these also appear to have discovered the length of the year of Venus. Dr. Förstemann's discussion of the subject amounts to a demonstration, and merits the close attention of students of Maya civilization.-Science, February 10.

The Approaching Solar Eclipse.-The total solar eclipse of April 15-16, 1893, is not only one of the longest of the century, but is the last of the century from which we are likely to get any additions to our knowledge of Solar Physics. The longest duration of totality of this eclipse is four minutes forty-six seconds, and as the path of the moon's shadow lies to a great extent on land, there is a considerable choice of possible stations with long durations of totality. Two expeditions will be sent from England; one to Africa, the other to Brazil, the expenses being defrayed by the Royal Society. The United States will send an expedition to Chili, and there will probably, be two or three American parties at Pasa Cura. A Brazilian party will also observe. The Bureau des Longitudes, Paris, are sending a complete expedition to Joal, in Africa. At present we have not heard of an Italian expedition, but it is hoped that Professor Tacchini will be able to make arrangements to observe the eclipse.-A. Taylor, in Nature, London, February 2.

BACTERIOLOGY.

The Influence of Light Upon Bacteria.-Buchner (Centralb.f. Bakt., Band xi., No. 25) has investigated the effect of light upon bacteria suspended in water. For the purposes of experiment the typhoid bacillus, bacillus coli communis, bacillus pyocyaneus, cholera vibrio, and various bacteria of putrefaction were employed. It was ascertained that light had a powerful disinfecting influence upon water containing these organisms. From water in which bacilli coli were present in the proportion of about 100,000 to a cubic centimetre no growth could be obtained upon plate cultures after exposure of the water to direct sunlight for one hour. Diffuse daylight has also this disinfecting power, though naturally in less degree. Light has not a detrimental influence upon all bacteria capable of living in water. Some even multiply under its action. Buchner has himself observed such; they could not, however, be grown upon nutrient gelatine, and probably were pure water bacteria, harmless from a hygienic point of view. Light must be considered the most powerful agent in the purification of rivers and lakes containing organisms harmful to man, such as the bacilli of typhoid and cholera.-British Medical Journal, London, February 4.

The White Corpuscles as Protectors of the Blood.-Dr. Werigo, when examining under the microscope the blood of a rabbit which had received, some minutes before, an injection of B. prodigiosus in the auricular vein, was surprised to find the blood almost destitute of leucocytes. He repeated the experiment, with the same result, and became convinced that the phenomenon was constant. In order to prove this, he made a series of experiments, in which he injected cultures of different microbes into the blood, counting the leucocytes before and afterward. The main fact brought forward receives the following explanation: The leucocytes disappear from the blood under the above-named circumstances because, when they have engulfed the microbes injected (which they speedily do), they are arrested in the organs, especially in the liver, where they pass on the ingested material to the endothelial cells of the organ. The rapidity with which the microbes. become enclosed in the leucocytes is most astonishing-it is far greater than we have been accustomed to suppose. It is not the leucocytes alone, however, which undertake the clearance of the microbes from the blood, for the cells of the spleen pulp, and also the endothelial cells of the liver, take on direct phagocytic functions. The author's researches also lead him to consider that the first event after the injection of any