Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1893. BANK NOTE BACTERIA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3004, 20 June 1893, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1893. BANK NOTE BACTERIA.

Pbofbssoh Thomas some days ago lectured at the University College, Auckland, on the subject of " Biology," in the course of which lecture he gave an interesting account of a recent examination that had been made of a Bank of New Zealand £1 note. The examination had been made by means of photography and the magic lantern, and the latter was used to place the results of the'examination before the Professor's audience. The Professor showed first a photograph of the note. In this there was nothing very remark able to be seen. It was dirty, to be sure, as thousands of bank note 3 are, and in this connection the Bank of New Zealand's notes are no more liable to the contact of dirty fingers than are the notes of other banks. But it was when the dirt that vas upon the note came to be investigated that the subject became interesting, as showing bow the ordinary courie of

the life of man can be to a large extent ( traced and followed by the light of • science. After showing the photograph of the note, the Professor threw on the screen a view oi the numerous bacteria obtained from the thin but very varied accumulations of dirt. There were a dozen different varieties of bacteria, and figuring veiy plainly among them was the "yeast plint." This was taken as evidence that that note while in the hands of the living had also been in the place of hops. It may have been "planked" down triumphantly on. the bar of a pub in payment of a shout of more or less magnitude, or it may have been through the hands of some fairly moderate man who used beer within righteously respectable limits at hia dinner table, or as the Professor put it, it might not have received its addition of yeasty bacteria from beer at all, but at the hands of some highly abstemious—baker. But there the yeast was, and it may be found on nearly every note that tafe es a place in the currency of the colony. Among-; exhibited was the bacterium to whose action is attributed the decay of human teeth. What did this denote ? Not a few things, and many that handlers of notes might not care to dwell upon. But evidently somebody with teeth the dentist ought to see to had been counting notes of which thiSj had been one, and had made use of a saliva moistened thumb in the operation. The exhibition was a most interesting scientific lesson, and showed in every slide and changing picture how easily paper money may become the means of spreading disease. .But as man.has to eat a peck of dirt in a lifetime, and touch unconsciously ever so much more, there are very few people, the professor's warnings notwithstanding, who will not run the gauntlet of all the bacteria that may be able to crowd themselves into the cells and corrugations of bank note paper, so long as the notes themselves are becoming their property.