these bacterial forms back into their parent-fungi, had pushed botanists into asserting, by way of emphasising their scorn alike for his conceptions as for his experiments, that nature even is as important in this matter as they take Hallier to have been. They have not only scouted his observations (in which they may have been right), but they have allowed themselves to be hurried into declaring that there is no genetic connection whatever between fungi and bacteria; and they have steadily adhered to the utterance and carefully eschewed facts that would seem to tell the other way. To give one illustration of the facultative parasitism of a fungus, presumably an Ustilago, in which the inference that the species assumes the shape of a bacterium is not to be avoided.

It has long been known that the smut of the larger species of reed, Arundo donax, causes great constitutional disturbance, headache, swelling of the head and face with vesicles or papular eruptions, affections of the air-passages, bowels, &c. &c. The irritation of the skin is followed by desquamation. About Ely, where the smaller reed, Arundo phragmitis, is largely used in thatching and plastering, the reed-cutters have similar, but milder, affections. An account of one of these attacks was given in the Lancet,1 from which I take the following extracts:

"A curious affection has been occasionally met with in certain parts of France, especially in Provence, among reed-workers, chiefly those who manipulate the stems of Arundo donax. A has lately been very carefully studied by M. Baltus.

case

A man, aged forty-seven, and his son aged seventeen, had been at work for several hours loading a cart with reeds, which had been cut a year before, and kept in a damp trench. Both were seized with painful irritation of the nose, eyes, and throat, followed by erythematous swelling of the same parts, which extended to the hands, trunk, and genital organs. A number of acuminated pustules appeared on the red swollen areas, the conjunctivæ were injected, the eyes streaming, and there was a slight cough. The next day four other personsthree adults and a child-who had come in contact with the

1 January 27, 1883.

reeds deposited at the farm, presented the same symptoms, although in a slighter degree. Moreover, four cats and three dogs which had frequented the same reeds presented red painful crusts about the nostrils. In every case the disease ran a mild course, and disappeared in a few days, under the influence of wet compresses. An examination of the reeds showed that they were covered with a mould consisting of the spores and mycelium of a fungus, Sporotrichum dermatodes, which had developed under the influence of the prolonged exposure to moisture. The spores had been shaken off as dust during the manipulation of the reeds, and had irritated the exposed parts of the skin on which they had lodged. Although usually trifling, the malady may sometimes assume a severe form, lasting nearly a fortnight, and has been known to cause the death of an old man seventy-one years of age. It may apparently be prevented by the simple expedient of washing the reeds before. their manipulation."

Somewhat similar accounts of the effects of handling these reeds are given in the article Urédinés in D'Orbigny's Dictionary -though there the specific infective vegetation is described as the grass-smut Ustilago hypodites. The writer conceives that the effect of the vegetation is due to its chemical composition. "On doit regretter," he says, "que l'Ustilago hypodites n'ait pas encore fixé l'attention des chimistes: son action sur l'économie est trop remarkable pour qu'ils ne s'en occupent pas un jour." [Ptomaines.]

M. Michel has a paper on this subject in the Revue Scien-. tifique for 1845 which is not accessible here. This paper is briefly referred to in D'Orbigny, where it is stated that though the botanical description of the fungus given by M. Michel is not full, it yet leaves no doubt that it was the Ustilago hypodites. The only other notice of M. Michel's paper I have fallen in with is a short but valuable one to the effect that the spores of the fungus, either injected or inhaled, produce violent papular eruption.

Perhaps M. Baltus may be right in assigning the specific effects which followed handling the reeds in the cases he

describes, to the Sporotrichum; but whether it was this fungus that caused them, or the Ustilago, or some other species, does not affect the present question. From the account in the Lancet M. Baltus appears to have supposed that the local symptoms were due to the contact of the spores of the fungus with the skin and air-passages; but if he inferred that all the dermal manifestations were due solely to contact, or to epiphytal parasitism, he probably omitted to take certain things into consideration. For granting that where the spores light on the skin they cause great irritation, still there can be little doubt that the papular eruption is exanthematous. The whole symptomatology of this instructive affection is distinctly that of entophytic parasitism. This is to be gathered even from the description of the complaint given by M. Baltus himself; but M. Michel's observations as to the effects of inhalation as well as injection of the spores, and the account in D'Orbigny's Dictionary, which gives some details touching the aphrodisiac properties of the vegetation, show unmistakably that the affection is a veritable exanthem following a definite course, with a characteristic eruption succeeded by desquamation, and that it is caused by the parasitism of a fungus in the fluids and tissues of the organism. It is, in fact, as typical an exanthem as any classed in the Exanthemata by the nosologist.

Assuming that this specific disease is caused by some specific fungus occurring on reeds, and for the present purpose it matters not what fungus, what is to be deduced in regard to its vegetative life in the body? what may rationally be supposed to become of its spores after admission into the host? Putting on one side nice botanical points, what can occur but that the vegetation at once sets about adapting itself to its altered conditions, and, morphosing rapidly into one or more of the many forms like those known to bacteriologists as Schizomycetes, is carried by the circulating fluids through the organism, and lays hold of, or is plugged up in, the small vessels of some of the mucous membranes, and of some of the other tissues, and especially of the skin, where it causes necroses ending in desquamation? Looking at its pathogenic effects by the light

G

of analogy, is there any other interpretation of the phenomena connected with the parasitic life of this fungus.

If the species now in question occurring on the Arundo donax is one of the Ustilagines, we have substantial proof of the facultative parasitism of the group; but whatever the species is, we have inferential proof of the highest kind of the presence of bacteroid forms in the blood that palpably come of a fungus. Yet it is not to be doubted that if these sporotrichal, or grass-smut, or other fungal, microbes were shown without explanation to bacteriologists, or even to botanists, they would be admitted without hesitation into the great order.

Enough has been advanced to show that the Ustilagines have long been under strong suspicion, though they may not yet have been formally convicted, of parasitism causing noxious effects in animals. And as modern botanists have shown them to be capable of saprophytism (with development of novel reproductive cells), it is unfortunate that the question of their faculty of parasitism in animals should have been left out of sight by those most capable of investigating the subject. Whether they come within the "straw fungi," and if so to what extent, will be discussed further on.

CHAPTER VI.

The common moulds come within the "straw fungi "-Inoculations with them—Mr. Berkeley's view that they do not cause epidemic disease -Their share in the infection of measles.

THE common moulds, though not peculiar to straw, are obviously in our order of "straw fungi." Pathologists have inoculated animals with aspergillus, penicillium, and mucor spores, and have found that some species are pathogenic and rapidly fatal in some organisms. The vegetation of the fungi in the animals selected for inoculation presented nothing in the nature of morphoses into forms that might have passed for bacterial forms— at least there is no mention of such transformation. But the point was not before the pathologists, and there is nothing to show that these same moulds might not vegetate differently in man and other animals, especially when finding entrance into the system by way of the air-passages in place of being inoculated.

It is sufficient to add that no valid biological reasons stand out against the view that some of these common moulds, in adapting themselves to parasitism in animals, take forms which might not be recognised by pathologists or botanists as within the spheres of development of the species. Although the saprophytic life of many of the groups has been keenly looked into, the investigation of their parasitic life (unless as epiphytes) has barely been entered upon. No one can tell therefore into what minute and strange forms they may morphose. Two or three of them or more may, for all that is known, even now be classed as distinct species of bacteria. This may be supposed more