Leeds, and printed for private circulation in 1892; this portrays his career as an exceedingly versatile man endowed by nature with the gifts of artist, poet, linguist and inventive ability, as well as those attributes which caused him to become widely known as a successful scientist. One of Dr. Morton's intellectual feats deserves recording; while still a college undergraduate he translated and designed an artistic monograph on the Rosetta Stone, which was afterwards reproduced by lithography in all its gay colors. His contributions to science are briefly narrated; his success in filling the responsible position of president of the Stevens Institute of Technology for many years, and his great generosity to the same, will require another volume yet to be written.
THE COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF BACTERIA IN MILK.
At the last meeting of the American Society of Bacteriologists Professor H. W. Conn described a series of experiments, the design of which was to determine what species of bacteria develop in milk during the first twenty-four hours and what species disappear. The general purpose of the experiments was to determine as far as possible the relation of milk bacteria to the healthfulness of milk. The conclusions presented by the paper were as follows: (1) Milk freshly drawn from the cow contains a large variety of bacteria. (2) For the first six hours and sometimes more, there is no increase in the number of bacteria, even when the milk is kept at 70°. On the contrary, there is commonly a decrease due to what has been called the 'germicide power' of milk. (3) In the fresh milk the largest number of bacteria are streptococci, which come, in most cases, directly from the udder of the cow. (4) During the first forty-eight hours there is a very great increase in the number of bacteria, but the number present after one or two days' growth is quite independent of the number present at the start. In many cases milk, which when fresh contained a small number of bacteria, at the end of forty-eight hours contained a number far greater than other samples of milk which at the outset had a larger number of bacteria present. (5) During the first forty-eight hours there is a considerable increase in the number of streptococci, followed by their decrease and final disappearance. (6) At the outset the number of lactic bacteria is extremely small, so small as, at times, quite to escape observation. (7) These lactic bacteria are, at least in the series of experiments described, derived from sources external to the cow and never, or rarely, from the milk ducts. (8) The lactic bacteria, though very few in number at the outset, increase far more rapidly than any other types, so that within twenty-four hours they are commonly in the majority, and by the end of forty-eight hours they commonly comprise considerably over ninety per cent, of all the bacteria present.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
Dr. Charles Kendall Adams died at Redlands, Cal., on July 27. He was president of Cornell University from 1885 to 1892, when he resigned and became president of the University of Wisconsin. This post he held actively until 1901, when he retired on account of ill health.
President David Starr Jordan has been successful in securing a valuable collection of fishes in the Bay of Apia, Samoa, some four hundred and fifty species, many of them new, having been collected.—Gen. A. W. Greely, chief of the U. S. Signal Service, has returned from Alaska, where he had been inspecting the work on the Government telegraph line from Valdez to Eagle City.—Mr. F. H. Newell, chief hydrographer of the U. S. Geological Survey, has gone to the West to supervise in
