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The secretion of the mouth in infants is acid, disease increases this acidity; and it has been found that this acid state is not merely favourable to the increase of thrush, but also to the development between the specks of thrush of a sort of membrane formed by a peculiar microscopic growth, of whose existence, just as of that of the phylloxera which destroys the vine, or the muscardine which kills the silkworm, we were ignorant till brought to light by recent scientific research.

The silkworm has long been known to be subject to a very fatal and infectious disease called the Muscardine. Audouin transmitted it by inoculation. This disease is entirely due to the development of a fungus, Botrytis Bassiana, in the body of the caterpillar; and its contagiousness and infectiousness are accounted for in the same way as those of the fly-disease.

Weismann suggests that the morbid condition of the nervous system may be due to some infection such as might arise from microbes, which find a home in the mutilated and disordered nervous system in the parent, and subsequently transmit themselves to the offspring through the reproductive elements, as the infections of various diseases appear to do the muscardine silkworm disease in particular being known to be conveyed to offspring in this manner.