The water in that spring, and I'll be perfectly frankthe water in most of the surface springs in this particular locality, is simply swarming with pathogenic germs, and amongst them I identified this morning the as yet unnamed coccus which I had the honour to discover, and which is as deadly as the coma bacillus of Asiatic cholera, orshall I say?the highly specialised venom of the rattlesnake.

"This coccus, my dear friend, increases and multiplies under certain conditions.

At the breath of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical rate, as if the whole civilised world had become suddenly intent upon dyeing its garments red, nay, as if even the naked savages of the Gold Coast and the tribes of Central Africa were bent on staining their dusky skins with the bodies of the female coccus.

And then, all in a moment, as the sky clouds over on a summer day, there came a dulness in the cochineal market, and the female coccus was being sold at an enormous sacrifice.