The author employs the official ingredients and quantities and heats the lard oil to 100° C., removes heat, and adds the nitric acid without stirring and reapplies heat when effervescence ceases until all gas is expelled. It is best to use a vessel of six times the capacity of the quantity to be made to allow for the copious effervescence which takes place. When the foregoing mixture has cooled to 40° C., the solution of mercuric nitrate is added and the temperature is raised gradually to 60° C., and maintained until no further evolution of gas is noticed. If it is then agitated until cold, as usual, the resulting product will comply with the requirements of the Pharmacopœia. Ointment made by the U. S. P. method, which has become spongy, may be remedied by elevating the temperature to 60° C. and cooling with agitation. _Typical Bacilli._--_E. Klein_ [_Quart. Jour. Micros. Sci._, 1894, 1-9 (1 _pl_)] concludes from observations on the bacilli of anthrax diphtheria, and tubercle, that these species are not such typical bacilli as they are usually represented to be. For though under many conditions their morphological characters are those of typical bacilli, yet under others they revert to or assume forms indicating their relationship to Saccharomyces or a still higher mycelia fungus. In the case of anthrax, the typical bacilli may be represented by oval and spherical bodies, some of which may contain vacuoles, and under conditions (early stages of growth on plates composed of beef bouillon, gelatin 10 per cent., pepton 1 per cent., salt 1 per cent.), the colonies are composed of large spindle-shaped, spherical or oval elements in which vacuolation is frequent. Similar appearances are to be observed in colonies of the thrush fungus. From this it is inferred that while _B. anthracis_ is a typical bacillus as a pathogenic microbe, yet in its early stages of growth on gelatin it may assume characters having much resemblance to _Saccharomyces mycoderma_ or _Oidium_ and thus return temporarily to an atavistic stage in its evolutionary history. With regard to _B. diphtheriæ_ the author points out that the club-shaped expansions of one or both ends are not to be regarded as due to involution, for both under natural and artificial conditions where there is active growth these expansions will be found, and have moreover a striking resemblance to the ends of growing hyphæ. Their existence, therefore, is only to be explained by their representing a relationship to a mycelial fungus. In the case of the tubercle bacilli, preparations not unfrequently show threads or filaments composed of unequal elements, some of them being conspicuous for knob-shaped expansions, similar to those of diphtheria. Such appearances occur not only in sputum but in artificial cultivations e.g. glycerin agar after some weeks incubation at 37°. All these preparations behave in the same way as _B. tuberculosis_ when treated with appropriate staining reagents; and that they are not