may be of less moment than those which spring from our own misdoings. Our own misdoings are not the great causes at work here, or it would no doubt be worse for us. We speak of those causes which produce the infectious diseases, of which, as we know, the visitations are sometimes very destructive. They possess in various degrees the power of passing from one person to another, and this power they owe to the agency of certain vegetable spores or "disease germs," which entering the body and increasing at the expense of its fluids, produce more or less disorganization of these, and as a result, morbid processes which obtain certain specific names as diseases.

The medium in which for the most part, those "germs" find themselves at home is water; both in its fluid and in its vapour form, it seems to be their habitat. In vapour they flourish abundantly, especially if it is not disturbed, and so we may suppose that if the vapour approaches the precipitation point in certain localities, that is, if those places are damp, there "germs" abound. They seem to multiply like all objectionable vegetable life in still, moist and warm places. The experience of the unwholesomeness of damp situations is universal, but with all our experience it is doubful if we duly appreciate the power of such situations to produce mischief. For example, there is no disease from which we suffer so much as from consumption. We have long been in the habit of regarding this as a complaint due to heredity. For some time past the origin of consumption, in this way exclusively, has been questioned. It has been told us by trustworthy observers, that the disease has been known to originate and prevail with great intensity in localities in which there was, from any cause, a moist condition of the earth, such as a stiff impermiable clay, and that removal from such locality has been followed by happy results to suffering families. Many physicians who have made their observations in country places have adopted the theory that a cold, sour, damp soil, and exhalations thence arising produced consumption without heredity. With professional caution they did not say how it arose in those localities. On the other hand, physicians whose experience has been obtained in large towns were disposed to hold the opinion broached by Sir John Rose Cormac, a Scottish physician resident in France, that the disarose from the breathing over and over again the same

ease

polluted air, an opinion which in other words agrees with those who say that the disease is one of those which are infectious. Lately a German physician has startled those of us who hold to old beliefs as to the nature of this malady, by proclaiming a discovery that with consumption there is associated a parasite which he and many with him regard as pointing to the origin of the disease in germ infection. If the German, Koch, is right in his conclusion it will be seen that the other observers were right too, as far as they went, and that water seems the habitat of the destructive organism according to all the theories of the causation of consumption.

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Now, if those are right who tell us that so many of the most dangerous diseases by which we are affected are due to germ infections," that is, to the introduction into our bodies of small seeds, or germs of a vegetable nature, does it not become us to carefully surround ourselves with conditions which are not favorable to the life of those deadly little organisms. These organisms are of various kinds, and each kind of them seems to make its presence known in its own peculiar way. They are invisible to ordinary sight and their national history cannot be said to be known, but, let us illustrate by what we can see and know of vegetation of larger growth, the mode in which this minute vegetation may come in contact with us, its victims. For example, we often see thistle down floating in the air, sometimes sailing into our houses. We express no surprise; we have seen that so often. We do not know, perhaps, of any thistles near us from which the down may come, and yet, when we see our houses entered by it, or in our gardens a growth of young thistles giving proof of "thistle infection," we raise no question with ourselves or others as to whence the trouble has come, we just proceed to clean up and root out. And we become watchful against the re-appearance of the intruders. Many of the mischief-causing little bodies which we are considering, seem to possess means of migration quite equal to those shown by thistle down. We need not be surprised, therefore, when we are unexpectedly visited by them, nor complain of the hardship of their presence, although there may have been all possible care on our part to prevent access by them to our dwellings. It looks as if they must have time, and be in quantity before much harm arises from them. Let us be always examining, turning over and cleaning as is our course when we wish to rid ourselves of

thistles and their seeds. In addition to their very effective means of flight, many varieties of "disease germs" are judged to possess great power of vitality. The microscope reveals many organisms which appear to be indestructible by ordinary agencies. Water is the medium of their activity-but they do not die when deprived of water; they dry up, and yet survive for an indefinite time, reviving and becoming active as before on the occurrence of favorable conditions. There is reason to believe that many disease germs are equally tenacious of life. They may lurk about our dwellings till circumstances may cause them to resume their activity, when the signs of their presence appear sooner or later. They are no doubt always around us more or less. Perhaps we have an example of their abundance in what is observed in mildew, a fungus of which there are many varieties, all having this in common, that in favorable conditions they appear with promptness, and in great abundance. We know that in given circumstances we may expect crops of it in our cupboards and in other close places. The undisturbed contact of moist organic matter with air at any temperature short of freezing is sufficient for its appearance. It can be understood that disease producing fungi may, like mildew, be rapidly produced in organic refuse, lying undisturbed and unobserved about our dwellings, and that by being parasitical, they obtain entrance into our living organisms, assimilating to themselves such constituents as are useful to their own growth, not unfrequently destroy the bodies, at the expense of which they thrive and multiply. Among the diseases familiar to us, which are regarded as being due to germ infection are typhoid fever, scarlatina, and diphtheria, deadly troubles very often, as we all too well know, but all to a great degree capable of prevention or mitigation by judicious precaution.

ure.

Individual precaution is not of much avail, there being such a wide spreading cause to deal with. The means to be adopted must be by the general consent, and must be carried out as a public measThere may be, among more or less near neighbors, some who may be propagating about their premises, poison enough for themselves and all around, but who, owing to the level of the soil, the prevailing winds or other causes, are not even suffering inconvenience from the state of things surrounding them, while others, perhaps among the most careful, are enduring the greatest suffering.

It is necessary that measures of prevention be as general and extensive as are the evils which they are intended to check. They must cover the whole community. We have all of us who have come to this conclusion, reached it somewhat slowly and reluctantly, for, in our first steps towards it, it seemed to involve an unpleasant interference with personal liberty and personal convenience. An Englishman's house is his castle, it was insisted, and a health officer would make short work of our castle theory. We had to adopt the health officer however, with all his intrusiveness, to save us from a worse visitor, and we are by degrees getting more and more persuaded that, after all, he is the less of two evils, of which we have the choice. His watchful aid is constantly needed within our houses as well as without and around them. It is astonishing how people often become familiarized with, almost attached to, filth of their own gathering, and live amongst it, and breathe its products, without feeling of offence or suspicion of evil. Such people are a destructive nuisance over a pretty extensive circle, of which they are the important but disagreeble centre, as may be witnessed in certain villages where every man does what is right in his own eyes, and but for a public health officer such centres would be numerous enough in every large town, to almost decimate its inhabitants every now and then.

Whether the germ theory of disease be right or wrong, whether germs be the product or cause of the changed conditions of the ancient system which we call disease, there can be no doubt of the necessity, with a view to preventing some of the most unmanageable diseases which assail us from time to time, as diphtheria, scarlatina, measles, typhoid fever, that we see to it that our own and our neighbors' surroundings are dry, and that they have not in or about them any of what most men call filth, but a few call material out of place; and farther, we may remember that having seen to those things, we have not been removing disease, but a nest of disease; that our own bodies are nests where such disease can thrive very well also, and therefore we must be careful not to put our own bodies in the way of affording shelter to passing germs of an obscene brood, in other words, we cannot use too great caution in approaching places where infectious diseases prevail. We have also to attend to personal cleanliness; the disease producing organisms are quite large enough apparently to be washed away, and on the other hand, small enough

to secure an entrance to our bodies by unheeded cracks in the skin, or through the pores of certain absorbing surfaces to which they may become applied. In typhoid fever absolute cleanliness is an almost sure condition of freedom from infection, unless the infectious material comes to surround us in what we may call clouds, while in the other mentioned diseases there is no doubt but that it affords an additional security.

If then we would keep our families free from the danger attending infectious diseases, some of which set medical skill at defiance, let us attend to the cleanliness of our persons and places of abode; let us not have about our premises any quiet neglected corners, where organic matter may rest and become influenced by heat and moisture,and so in time come to give life and growth to organisms, whose neighborhood is often so dangerous to us, and let us remember too that in this matter each of us is to some extent his brother's keeper. We must keep a look-out on each other, and none of us need be annoyed if, now and then, a neighbor should personally, or through the authorities, call our attention to some neglect on our part, which is rendering all his carefulness of no effect, and threatening him with grievous disaster.

THE DISCOVERY OF BURLINGTON BAY, With some Accounts of the Aborigines of the Province of Ontario and the State of New York.

BY B. E. CHARLTON.

Two and a half centuries ago, or to be more correct say about the year 1634, a glance at this portion of the continent of North America, finds the French re-established at Quebec, and also in a small way at Hochelaga, now Montreal. And the Dutch at New Holland and Manhattan, now respectively Albany and New York.

Of the Indian tribes, the two prominent nations were the Hurons, allies of the French, in the north, extending from lake Simcoe around the Georgian bay along the French and Ottawa rivers; and, on the other hand, the fierce Iroquois to the sonth, extending eastward from Niagara river, and south from Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. The former trading with the French at Montreal and Quebec, by way of the Ottawa; the latter trading with the Dutch