Planes Hunt Bacteria

AN AIRPLANE hunt for bacteria was a recent novelty at Cambridge, England. Its object was to determine how plant and crop diseases are spread in upper air currents.

Several kinds of germ traps were used by the airplane that made the tests. Glass slides smeared with petrolatum, and test tubes and glass dishes filled with jellies offering breeding places for germs, were exposed at certain times during the flights, which reached a maximum altitude of 13,000 feet.

The tests showed that large numbers of bacteria and fungus spores were present and vigorously alive as far as two miles above the earth. They seemed especially to congregate upon clouds. Although the tests were not concerned with disease germs of a sort that attack man, they showed that these, too, probably are carried by wind currents at great heights above the earth and that epidemics may spread in this way.