Sir T. Spencer Wells pointed out, in his paper read before the British Medical Association, in August, 1880, that the observations of Darwin, “on the formation of mould,” made more than 40 years ago, when he was a young man, are curiously confirmatory of the conclusions of Pasteur. In Darwin’s paper, read at the Geological Society of London, in 1837, he proved that, in old pasture-land, every particle of the superficial layer of earth, overlying different kinds of subsoil, has passed through the intestines of earthworms. The worms swallowed earthy matter, and, after separating the digestible or serviceable portion, they eject the remainder in little coils or heaps at the mouths of their burrows. In dry weather the worm descends to a considerable depth, and brings up to the surface the particles which it ejects. This agency of earthworms is not so trivial as it might appear. By observation in different fields, Mr. Darwin proved, in one case, that a depth of more than three inches of this worm-mould had been accumulated in 15 years; and, in another, that the earthworms had covered a bed of marl with their mould, in 18 years, to an average depth of 13 inches. Professor Klebs, of Prague, Bohemia, discovered the bacteria of malarial fever. They were called by him _bacilli malariæ_. His discovery was verified by Prof. Tomassi Crudelli, of Rome, Italy. Dr. Robert Koch, of the Imperial Sanitary Bureau at Berlin, Germany, detected the _bacillus tuberculosis_; there is no doubt, to my mind, but that consumption can possibly be spread by the upturning of the soil of a grave containing the victim of tuberculosis. The same gentleman, now professor in Berlin University, discovered the _comma bacillus_ of cholera. He expressed his belief in its propagation in the grave, especially when the latter is moist. Houlier and Feruel are responsible for the statement that, during the prevalence of the plague in Paris in the beginning of the 18th century, the disease lingered longest and was the most severe in the vicinity of the “cimetière de la Trinité.” The _Detroit Evening News_, of Sept. 23, 1886, reports the following case in which diphtheria was contracted from a corpse:— “Blanche Hunt, a 12-year old girl, died at Albion of malignant diphtheria last week. Sophie Calkins, aged 13, died at Fair Haven, Vt., of the same disease, contracted the week before at Albion. There are no other cases in town, and these two girls are supposed to have taken the disease at the cemetery, where they went into the vault containing the remains of a woman sent there from abroad, who had died from what the physicians called black jaundice. It is believed her disease was really diphtheria.” As early as 1878, the Massachusetts State Board of Health—one of the best in the world—showed that diphtheria is originated and diffused by the emanations of victims of that disease. In 1875 the same high authority had reached similar conclusions regarding typhoid fever.