The principal danger of garden-soil or street-dust in a wound is not so much from pus-germs, though these may be present, as from another "bug"--the tetanus or lockjaw bacillus. This deadly organism lives in the alimentary canal of the horse, and hence is to be found in any dirt or soil which contains horse manure. It is, fortunately, not very common, or widely spread, but enough so to make it the part of prudence to have thoroughly asepticized and dressed any wound into which considerable amounts of garden-soil, or street-dust, have been rubbed. The reason why wounds of the feet and hands have had such a bad reputation, both for festering and giving rise to lockjaw, is that it is precisely in these situations that they are most likely to get garden-soil, or stable manure, into them. The classic rusty nail does not deserve the bad reputation as a wound-maker which it enjoys, its bad odor being chiefly due to the fact already referred to, that injuries inflicted by it are most apt to be in the palm of the hand, or in the sole of the foot, and hence peculiarly liable to contamination by the tetanus and other soil bacilli. For some reason or other which we don't as yet thoroughly understand, burns from a toy pistol in particular, and Fourth of July fireworks in general, seem to be peculiarly liable to be followed by tetanus. The fulminate used in the cap of a toy pistol, and the paper and explosives of several of the brands of firecrackers, have been thoroughly examined bacteriologically, but without finding any tetanus germs in them. So many cases of lockjaw used to follow the Fourth of July celebrations a few years ago, that Boards of Health became alarmed, and not only forbade outright the sale of deadly toy pistols, but provided supplies of the tetanus antitoxin at various depots throughout the cities, so that all patriotic wounds of this description could have it dropped into them when they were dressed. Since then, the lockjaw penalty which we pay for our highly intelligent method of celebrating the Fourth, has diminished considerably. It is probable that the mortality was chiefly due to infection of the ugly, slow-healing, dirty little wounds with city-dust, a large percentage of which, of course, is dried horse manure. What with the tetanus bacillus and the swarms of flies which breed chiefly in stable manure, and carry summer diseases, typhoid, diphtheria, and tuberculosis in every direction, it will not be long before the keeping of horses within city limits will be as strictly forbidden as pigpens now are. So definite is the connection between the tetanus bacilli and the soil, that tetanus fields or lockjaw gardens are now recognized and listed by the health authorities, on account of their having given rise to several successive cases of the disease. Workers in such fields or gardens, who scratch or cut themselves, are warned to report themselves promptly for treatment with the tetanus antitoxin.