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occurred in narrow lanes and in houses in which cases had occurred during 1896. This appears to me to suggest that the infection of the disease adheres most tenaciously to dwellings which have once become infected, and in view of much of the experimental evidence concerning the vitality of the Bubonic Fever bacillus under certain conditions, I am strongly inclined to apply, tentatively, Sanarelli's theory concerning the bacillus of Yellow Fever, namely, that the vitality of the bacillus, outside the living bodies of man and animals, depends largely upon the co-existence of vetegable moulds by which it is nourished, to the infective material of this disease also. It is already well known that a moist atmosphere, defective ventilation, a moderate amount of heat, and the absence of sunlight, are the most favourable conditions for the development of the Bubonic Fever bacillus, while they are also the conditions which encourage the free growth of the vegetable moulds, and it is not unreasonable therefore to surmise that this property of symbiosis, which has also been observed by Metchinkoff in connection with the bacillus of cholera, may have not a little to do with the persistence of the bacillus of Bubonic Fever in damp and ill-ventilated dwellings. This theory may perhaps also serve to throw a side-light upon the origin of the recent epidemic of Bubonic Fever in Bombay and other parts of India, for one of the causes to which the outbreak was freely attributed by scientific authorities on the spot was the consumption of inferior qualities of mouldy grain, which if imported from a district in which the disease is endemic, such as parts of China or North-west India, might well have conveyed the specific bacillus. The following extract from the Indian press bears. out this point. In a public lecture in the Sassoon Institute, Bombay, Dr. G. WATERS disposed of the theory that Bubonic Fever had been imported into Bombay from Hongkong by rats in ships. He inclined to the belief that it was not introduced from other ports, but had its origin in the large granaries of the Mandvie quarter of the town. The first outbreak was among the granary employés, and rat murrain was first discovered there. Surgeon-Colonel CLEGHORN, who has made a special investigation for the Indian authorities, holds the same opinion. It is stated as a curious fact by both doctors that wheat and rice eaters have enjoyed almost complete immunity from the disease, which has been most prevalent among the millet eaters (Hindoos)-millet being a generic term for various kinds of inferior grain.' The grain would probably in such a case be primarily infected by rats suffering from the disease, but such infection would only be retained by the inferior and mouldy grain, the bacilli deposited with the excreta in sound, dry grain being unable to retain their vitality during exportation from the infected to uninfected areas. It is an important fact, in this connection, that many of the historical outbreaks of Bubonic Fever have been associated with a failure of the cereal crops and occasionally also with outbreaks of ergotism. It is true that the Asiatic races do not eat their rice and other grain uncooked, but most of the inferior grain is ground into flour, which is made into cakes, and the heat necessary to cook these cakes, which are just browned on the outside, is not sufficient to destroy any bacilli there may be in the flour. I do not wish to suggest, however, that diet is the only, or even necessarily the most important factor in the dissemination of this disease, for I am still of the opinion that the atmosphere in the immediate neighbourhood of a patient suffering from the disease, where such patient is confined in a dirty, dark and ill-ventilated dwelling, is infective to very much the same extent as in Typhus Fever, and that when such atmosphere is breathed for any length of time by a healthy individual, the bacilli have every opportunity of gaining access to the lymphatic system of the respiratory tract by inhalation, and of the alimentary tract by swallowing the mucus and saliva of the mouth and pharynx, to which any particulate bodies in the atmosphere would naturally adhere. I certainly cannot subscribe however, for the reasons given in my Annual Report for 1895, to the theory which has been so freely canvassed in connection with the outbreak of this disease in Bombay, that infection is contracted, in the great majority of the cases, by inoculation through small abrasions of the skin. These reasons were that the inguinal and femoral buboes have been found to occur just as frequently among the European cases of the disease, who are carefully shod as among the natives who habitually go barefooted; the Europeans employed in house to house visitation and cleansing work during the Plague epidemics in this Colony of 1894 and 1896, who contructed the disease, all had femoral or inguinal buboes, although it can hardly be denied that their bare hands and arms were, by the nature of the work in which they were employed, far more exposed to any infection by inoculation than were their feet and legs; secondly, that only in very rare cases is there any evidence of a wound, of any local inflammation, or of lymphangitis, although in cases of experimental inoculation of animals these latter have always occurred, except (it is said) in a few cases in which a pure culture of the bacillus has been used, and in view of the fact that pus, blood, sputum and intestinal excreta are the natural media of transmission of the disease, it would be unreasonable to suppose, as is necessary to render this theory of infection by inoculation tenable, that contact of the supposed wound with a pure culture, is in the human subject the almost invariable rule. Another objection to this theory is that none of the diseases which are unquestionably transmitted by inoculation (e.g., rabies, tetanus, charbon, etc.) have hitherto been known to occur in widespread epidemics, and the theory therefore commits us to an entirely new phase in the aetiology of the communicable diseases, and one which certainly ought therefore to be fully substantiated by facts before its advocates can expect it to meet with general acceptance.

It is difficult, I admit, to explain, with any other theory, why the inguinal and femoral glands should be so frequently the first to betray the disease, but I must confess that I still adhere to the explanation of this fact given by me in my Annual Report for 1895, namely, that the disease is essen-