(_c_) Alsberg has shown that in recent years new methods of harvesting corn have become common in the Southern States of the United States. Instead of topping the corn it is cut and shocked with the result that conditions are more favorable for the spoiling of the corn. He also notes that varieties of corn are now planted which have a greater oil content, which means a larger embryo, and that it is this embryo which most easily spoils. Again he notes that much corn is now raised in Northern States where the season is shorter, so that there is a greater probability of immature corn being marketed. All of these facts might explain the recent appearance of pellagra in the U. S. and its previous nonexistence. Thomas has shown that where 30 grams of a _superior protein_, such as that of meat, would suffice, it would require 102 grams of corn protein, an _inferior protein_. This inferiority is due to a lack of assimilability of the amino-acids of corn protein. Protein deficiency is the outstanding feature of a pellagra-producing diet and in the corn protein we have one of inferior value. _The Antizeistic Views._—As a rule the advocates of nonimportance of maize in the production of pellagra hold that we are dealing with an infectious disease and that it can only come into existence by transmission from some other case. 1. The Thompson-McFadden Commission, while holding a very conservative attitude, feel that certain faecal bacteria may be the etiological factors. 2. Alessandrini believes that the causative factor may be present in certain waters. These views are that colloidal silica in water is responsible for the disease. Voegtlin noted the great amount of aluminium in certain vegetables and suggested this as the toxic causative substance. A mixture of colloidal alumina and silica in water is supposed to be operative as well as silica alone. Against the colloidal silica hypothesis is the statement of Sandwith that the water of the Nile, the drinking water of Egypt, is low in colloidal silica content. 3. Long has suggested that amoebae may be the cause. 4. Tizzoni has incriminated a streptobacillus which he stated he found in the blood and organs of pellagrins as well as growing on maize. =Epidemiology.=—As the result of very careful epidemiological studies the Thompson-McFadden Pellagra Commission came to the conclusion that there was evidence against the transmission of pellagra by ticks, lice, bedbugs, cockroaches, fleas, mosquitoes and buffalo gnats (_Simulium_). They were rather disposed to consider that the disease showed a greater prevalence where the disposal of faeces was unhygienic, as in unsanitary privies, and that the existence of an efficient water sewerage system prevented pellagra. If faecal bacteria should act as infectious agents then the house fly would possibly be worthy of suspicion.