Giard and Billet were obtained at Wimereux near Boulogne. I found the disease very abundant at Ouistreham near Caen in the summer of 1900. I have not observed it nor heard of its occurrence on the English coast. Sea-water commonly contains a free-living phosphorescent bacterium which can be cultivated in flasks of liquid food so as to give rich growths which glow like a lamp when the flask is agitated so as to expose the contents to oxidation. This bacterium is not, however, the cause of the 'phosphorescence' of the sea often seen on our coasts. That is due in most cases to a much larger organism, as big as a small pin's head, and known as Noctiluca miliaris.
NOTE 9 (p. 33).
As little is the question of the use and abuse of food and drink dealt with, as yet, by civilized man. As in many other matters man has carried into his later crowded, artificial, nature-controlling life habits and tendencies derived from savage prehistoric days, so has he perpetuated ways of feeding which are mere traditions from his early 'animal' days and have never been seriously called in question and put to proof. The persistence under new conditions of either habit or structure which belonged to old conditions may be attended with great danger and difficulty to an organism which changes, as man does, with great rapidity important features in its general surroundings and mode of life. This is in effect Metschnikoff's doctrine of 'désharmonies.' It is probable that in very early days when a tribe of primitive men killed a mammoth, they all rushed on to the dead monster and gorged as much of its flesh as they could swallow (cooked or possibly uncooked). They had to take in enough to last for another week or two—that is to say, until another large animal should be trapped and slain. Accordingly he who could eat most would be strongest and best able to seize a good share when the next opportunity arrived, and it naturally became considered an indication of strength, vigour, and future prosperity to be capable of gorging large quantities
