of his mice were immune, all (51) died from the effects of the disease. His experiments on the ordinary house mouse (M. Musculus) in a state of liberty were equally convincing'. The bacillus is to be found in the blood of inoculated mice several days before death and, with proper aseptic precautions, it may easily be demonstrated there. This explains the fact that every part of the body of a mouse dead of the disease of infection. may be used as a source Mereshkovvsky has elaborated an extremely simple method of distributing cultivations of the bacillus in bouillon, and has further found that such cultivations may be sent long distances without losing their virulence for instance from St. Petersburg to Siberia and back so that there is no reason why there should not be extensive use made of his method in those parts of India which are subject to the ravages of field-mice or rats. It is of course well known that every species of such is not liable to this disease, still, considering the extreme simplicity of the method, experiments could easily be made on the various species that cause such great damage in different parts of India; success would be enormously profitable to the cultivators, and failure would not mean much in the way of preliminary trouble or expense. C. Bl. fur Bakterioloyie Bd. 10, No. IS. Loeffler recommends covering the piston of hypodermic needles with a cap made of thin india-rubber, suitably fastened, in order to make such easily sterilisable. This proceeding is very easy to carry out. Thin india-rubber can be obtained from any large chemist in India, and it has further this advantage that pistons whose packing has got loose or small, may be in a few minutes adjusted to the calibre of thin glass tubes. The method may further be applied to any form of syringe, and is of especial value in the syringes supplied to military hospitals whose packing is usually very loose. F. H. BURTON BROWN, m.b.

^(ilccfions. SELECTIONS FliOM GERMAN'.

Mereshkowsy on the virulence of Loeffler's Bacillus of the Enteric Fever of Mice. C. Bl.

fiir Baliteriologie

Hd. 1G, Nos. 15-16.

Mereshkowsky has examined this question with great care. He experimented on both mice at large and kept in captivity. The technique of his experiments on the latter seems absolutely faultless. He entirely confirms Loeffler's results with the somewhat important exception that he found the time of death after infection might be much longer than that given by Loeffler (8?14 days). He states that in some of his cases death did not occur until the 56th and even the 63rd day. He thinks that Loeffler probably did not observe his mice long enough to notice this, putting down those which outlived the shorter period as immune. Mereshkowsky states that none