The explanation will cause surprise. The earth-worms transport the germs, and bring up, from the depths where they lie buried, the terrible microbes. In the tiny cylinders of earth which the worms deposit on the surface of the soil, after the dews of the morning or after rain, the splenic germs are to be found. It is easy to prove this directly. If in earth, with which spores of the microbe have been previously mingled, we place some worms, and at the end of several days open the bodies of these worms, with all necessary precautions, so as to extract from them the earthy matter which fills their intestinal canals, we find in them large numbers of splenic fever spores. It is, then, absolutely proved, that if splenic fever germs exist, as they often do, in the light earth which covers the pits in which animals dead of that disease lie buried, these germs result from the disintegration by rain of the little excremental cylinders deposited by the earth-worms. The dust of this disintegrated earth spreads itself over the grasses on a level with the soil, and thus it is that animals come to find on the pasture-field, and in particular kinds of forage, the germs of splenic fever by which they are infected. 'In these results,' said Pasteur a short time ago at the Academy of Medicine, 'what outlooks are opened to the mind in regard to the possible influence of earths in the etiology of diseases, and the possible danger of the earth of cemeteries!' The earth-worms also bring to the surface other germs, which, while they are as harmless to the worms as the splenic germs, are nevertheless bearers of diseases to which animals are liable. All sorts of germs are found in them, and the germs of splenic fever are in fact always associated with those of putrefaction and septicæmia. * * * * *