HARDY MICROBES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4834, 16 April 1936, Page 2

HARDY MICROBES

FOUND AT 20,000 FEET. There is no evading the microbe. Professor R. C. McLean, lecturing to the London School of Hygiene, described their existence in the air of the highest clouds. Aeroplane surveys up to 20,000 feet have brought back news and specimens of microbes from their flights. Microbes, surrounded by globules of moisture, find a home in the towering cumulus clouds. They dwell at such heights in their greatest numbers at the base of the clouds, where there is most moisture. They explain in part why clouds form and drop rain. Moist air needs something about which to condense. Dust is one kind of nucleus. It now appears that the microbe is another. Like dust, the microbes are swept up from the surface of the earth by uprising currents of air. Even at great heights they are well provided for. They have water to surround them, they derive nourishment, as plants do, from the disintegration by rays of the gases about them, and f he same rays stimulate their growth. Many years ago a scientist, Dr. Johnstone Stonev, suggested that their small size enabled them to use rays of light to better advantage. Their discovery among the clouds throws a new light on the way diseases are sometimes mysteriously conveyed from one part of the Earth to another. Some-diseases are carried by water, many by insects, and some have been supposed to be carried by air, though none could quite say how. The microbes in the clouds suggest a new possibility. It is certain that these tiny living things, though heat will destroy them, can survive nearly all degrees of cold.