Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1882 [PAGE 100]

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INTRODUCTION.

Biology—the science of life—has no more interesting and important problems than those concerning the smallest and simplest of animate objects, the Bacteria. These exceedingly common living things, visible to us only by the aid of powerful magnifiers, have latterly received much attention on account of the endeavor to find out by scientific research, the orgin of life on our globe; but more for the undreamed of power and influence which they have been found to possess and exercise in the operations of the organic world. Since the discovery of their existence and modes of action, many questions previously unanswerable have become easy, and the knowledge obtained has passed into science to serve, not only as an intellectual stimulus to man, but as sure standing-ground from which he may reach other heights and gain at last his rightful dominion over the forces and objects of earth. It is not too much to say that mankind could not continue to exist, could never have existed, on "the earth as at present constituted, but for these minute though effective agents; the truth of this does not depend on any mere figure of speech, or even on any delicate adjustment of nature, but on the actual and essential work accomplished. Without them, and with other things as they are, there could have been no fertile soil, no luxuriant pastures, no bountiful harvests, no possibility for man. On the other hand we should not suffer many of the ills that flesh is heir to, if we could escape their restless activities in certain forms and ways. It is the object of this paper to present, in language freed as far as possible from technical terms, the principle and most interesting facts now known about these silent-working denizens of the earth, the air, and the water. Should any one wish to inquire further, he may soon find an abundant literature on the subject; but the whole matter is still so new that a great proportion of it is only to be found in the scientific periodicals of the last two decades, and unfortunately for many, mostly in foreign tongues. The best general work of American publication is The Bacteria, a translation from the French of Dr. Magnin, by Dr. (j. M. Sternberg: Little, Brown & Co., Boston, Mass. There are several excellent general articles in numbers of the Popular Science Monthly, and very instructive reports by Drs. Detmers, Law and Salmon, on infectious diseases of animals, in the annual reports of the United States Commissioner of Agriculture, for 1878, 1879, and 1830. For "blight" in pear trees, etc., see report for 1880, of the Illinois Industrial University. Charles S. Dolley, of Bochester, N. Y., has issued in pamphlet form a translation from the German of an interesting general article by Ferdinand Cohn.