Opinion seems unanimous in deeming the microbe called bacterium (ßaxτýpior, a stick) a vegetable, but the greatest bewilderment reigns as to its place in the botanical kingdom. The general tendency is to approximate it to the alga and the mushrooms; that is to say, to plants having chlorophyll and plants not having chlorophyll. Thus they may be provisionally located in Sach's "subkingdom," or embranchment, as the French call it, of Thallophytes, in which the class alge and the class mushrooms regard each other, so to speak, from two botanically opposite poles of nutrition.

Some of these bacteria are dangerous, some are harmless. The one known as the bacillus of tuberculosis (consumption) is undoubtedly dangerous, but Professor Koch announces that in some minutes, or, if the "culture" is thick, in some hours, an exposure to the sunlight will kill it dead. "Entirely different (tout autre) is the action of light upon the lower mushrooms," says Dr. Arloing. But then the "composition of the atmosphere" of the culture and the pressure to which that atmosphere is submitted "profoundly modify the vegetation of microbes," and we have certain of this gentry that will flourish only in a vacuum or in an atmosphere of carbonic acid, while others only work well in an oxygenated atmosphere like that we breathe. The bacillus anthracis, originally named bactéridie, is usually taken as a type of the bacterium that works well in the air. On trial, it will kill a steer in an hour and a half. In man, the autopsy shows black blood, intestinal hemorrhages, and the gall bladder gorged with blood. The bacillus anthracis is therefore an aerobe. The bacillus septicus, more popularly known as "gangrene," is usually taken as a type of the microbe that does not work well in the air, though always lying in wait in hospitals for an amputation not performed under cover of a spray of disinfectant, as practiced by the English physician Lister during the sixties. This septicemia-producing microbe is a human infliction, and picks out the enfeebled-women giving birth to children, men losing arms or legs by the surgeon's knife. The autopsy shows that the muscles have been most violently inflamed, the body bloated; in short, the living being has died putrefying. It is now not the blood that is robbed of its oxygen, but the impure atmosphere surrounding dead flesh or dried blood calls the aerobe into life, and having once started in the way of fermentation, it pulls apart the tissues of the body, propagating in the atmosphere it thus produces. There is a bacterium, says M. Trouessart, which is excessively common, which is called bacterium termo, or microbe of impure water. It is perfectly harmless, and is found in the human month.

These three kinds of microbes have been spoken of as though they were large, but they have a very small appearance under the highest powers of the microscope, and only the initiated can separate them. Hence the necessity of an institute or place where the investigations of the professor are assisted by the presence and the cooperation of those who are themselves about to profess the study of medicine. "If we are spared that customary portion of this lecture," says Professor De Bary, "which shows the importance of a subject, because the educated public knows that a large part of all health and disease in the world is dependent on bacteria, it becomes the more necessary to give prominence to the reverse side of the question and to call attention to the fact that the problem can only be solved by quiet scientific examination from every possible point of view of those objects.” If there are plants which can attack the weakened living body and come out victorious in the struggle against the natural recuperatory energies of the human system, appropriating its elements as a mushroom does those of a fermenting dung heap, and if there are others which are essential to the digestive processes of the human body, it would appear that physiology takes on a new face and becomes a

'Dr. Arloing thinks that it is absolutely necessary for every microbe to have oxygen in order to live and grow.

* Lectures on Bacteria, p. 1, by A. De Bary, second edition, Clarendon Press, translation of Garnsey

and Balfour.

question as to what microscopic plants live in beneficial communion or "symbiosis" with the living human organism, and what plants, "symbiotically," are destructive to it.

In 1888 the Pasteur Institute was opened. The orator of the day, the professor of protection against hydrophobia, called it an antirabies institute (l'institut antirabique). M. Pasteur, however, in his remarks on that occasion, characterized it somewhat differently. "For myself," he said, "if I have had the happiness, gentlemen, during the course of my investigations to ascertain some principles that time has confirmed and rendered fruitful it is because nothing has been refused to me by my country or my friends in my efforts to reduce the effects of microbic poisons upon men not only in applying the prophylactic method against hydrophobia, but also the study of virulent and contagious diseases. The professor of the prevention of hydrophobia will be M. Granchéa (the orator of the day), assisted by three physicians, while the minister of public instruction has authorized my oldest pupil and coworker to give here the instruction in biologic chemistry with which he is now charged in the faculty of sciences at the Sorbonne. M. Chamberland will be charged with the relations of microbes and hygienic precautions, and Dr. Roux' will teach the relations of microbes and the practice of medicine. Two learned Russian physicians, Metchnikoff and Gamalêia, have volunteered their assistance, and are charged with the form of the inferior organisms and comparative microbiology."

by being organized into schools where study is research under direction, the other branch, the branch of vegetable biology, is being organized in the same way. Some attention has been given in another part of this report to the researches of Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert, of Saussure, Boussingault, and Liebig, of Pasteur, Wilfarth, and Hellriegel, Schloesing and Müntz, and of Darwin. But the laboratory of Sachs, at Würzburg University, is probably the earliest typical institute for the purpose of investigating the nature of vegetable life. In America each State has a station known as experimental, for which Congress annually appropriates $15,000, a large sum as compared with the amounts given to the institutes of Germany, though it must be remembered that a dollar in Europe will purchase much more than in the castern United States, and very much more than on the Pacific coast. These American experiment stations are not seemingly "institutes," but are a hybrid between the

Several years ago mentioned in connection with the discovery of the microbe of diphtheria. 2In embryology or fecundation of flowers and the growth of the embryo the names of Strassburger, of the University of Boun, and of Guignaud, of the laboratory of the Museum of Natural History, are preeminent.

Rue de l'arbalète.

FIG. 13.-General plan of the Institut National Agronomique. On the second floor, above G HIL are the museums of agriculture, geology, and zoology; above the chambers E are the rooms for the first-year students; on the third floor, above A and A and B and B, is the library; above the chambers E are the botanical laboratories; above j is the laboratory of comparative agriculture.

Rothamsted Experimental Station and the establishment known as the Institut National Agronomique at Paris, France. The work of the Rothamsted Station is given on page 955. Here we are concerned with the National Agricultural Institute at Paris.1

The outburst in 1818 for popular government and the dissemination of intelligence which created the second French Republic, established at the magnificent suburban resort of the French kings called Versailles an institution named an agricultural institute. The coup d'e'tat that founded the second Napoleonic empire in the course of two or three years ousted this school from the outbuildings and the park of this palace, and the school was no more heard of. The third French Republic of 1875, however, established an institute agronomique whose function was declared to be "to study and to teach the sciences in their relations with agriculture.” The school was joined to the School of Arts and Trades (Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers) at Paris. There was a question as to the advisability of locating an agri cultural institute in a city. This fact decided that question, "The great city of Paris alone possessed the savants who are the keystone of the vault of higher education, and the libraries, museums, and all the auxiliary riches of the same nature which are indispensablo to thorough scientific studies (aux fortes études scientifiques)." M. Boussingault was put in general charge of the laboratories, M. Schloesing was appointed professor of chemistry applied to agriculture, and his colleague in the discovery of the microbous ferment in the soil, M. Müntz, had charge of the practical course in chemical manipulations. But in the course of twenty years the instruction has been very greatly changed, though the general plan is the same. In the first place, in 1882 the school was removed from the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and installed at the corner of Claude Bernard and Arbaléte streets, quite near to the Sorbonne, and "two steps from the Jardin des Plantes."

2

Each "salle d'études" is capable of holding ten students. They are in rows occupying the front along Claude Bernard street. The library contains 16,000 volumes, and is particularly rich in the literature of agriculture, both French and foreign. The micrographic or botanical dissecting hall will hold forty students, and is fitted up with light tables. The laboratories are numerous and large. In one eighty students may work at the same time. The professor director has a laboratory, so has the professor of chemical analysis and demonstrations, the demonstrators, preparators, etc. There is also a "laboratory of fermentations," of mechanical and hydraulic agriculture, of zootechny. Then there are the museums on the third floor. In all making a very imposing display and offering every inducement to the inhabitants to do something worthy of their opportunities.

THE TRADE INSTITUTE OR MUSEUM.

The conservatism of the French Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers has been pictured by the late Viollet le Duc in his How to Make a Draftsman, a book which should be constantly in the hands of those who are ambitious to direct "industrial education" in America. M. Viollet takes his young draftsman hither and thither in the world, but the Germans, like the English in their South Kensington Museum, collect the productions or imitation thereof of foreign nations past or present in a gewerbe, that is to say a trade, institute, which is not an exchange or place for selling things, but a place for showing how other people make better things than the Germans do, and therefore conquer them in competition. In the next report of this Bureau it is hoped to lay this movement before those interested in the development of industry and competition in the world's markets. It will suffice on the occasion to show the outside appearance of the most recently erected of these institutions.

Following G. Wery in Journal d'Agriculture Pratique, Nos. 43 and 44, 1897

2 Prussia has done the same, founding an agricultural institute in Berlin.

FIG. 14.-THE NEW NATIONAL TRADE MUSEUM (K. Landesgewerbemuseum), STUTTGART (FRONT VIEW).