I=;6 MARTIN FROBISHER, JR. 



One of these yellow colonies, smeared under a cover slip, 

 showed that the mold had invaded the colony of torulae and 

 matted and bound the whole colony into a solid mass. The 

 yeast cells seemed to suffer somewhat from the contact, since 

 when one of these yellow colonies was stained by methylene 

 blue most of the entangled cells appeared to be wholly or partly 

 disintegrated. The destruction of the red torula cells by the 

 mold probably explains why so much difficulty was originally 

 encountered in isolating the red organism. The mold does not 

 appear to have such an effect upon the commercial yeast, for 

 good growth of this yeast was obtained even after prolonged 

 contact with the mold. 



Regarding the occurrence of a red torula in compressed yeast 

 cakes it may be said that this is not a specially remarkable 

 circumstance, and may have been observed before. The pink 

 or red torulse appear to be fairly widely distributed in nature. 

 They have been known for a long time and seem to have been 

 first described in 1850 when Fresinius (3) first described Crypto- 

 coccus glutinis. Pink torulae or yeasts have been isolated from 

 various beer and wine musts, milk, cheese, sea water, plant 

 diseases and other sources. The finding of such an organism by 

 Fisher and Brebeck (4) in the stomach of a case of gastric fermen- 

 tation is of interest in view of the ability of the organism herein 

 described to grow well at an acidity similar to that of the normal 

 gastric contents. A pink yeast or torula causing spoilage in 

 oysters has been described by Hunter (5). Similar organisms 

 have been isolated by the author from oysters taken from Chesa- 

 peake Bay. The organism mentioned above resembles these 

 varieties in many respects and probably belongs to the same 

 family or genus, but also shows differences that indicate that it 

 is not of the same species, the chief difference being that it is 

 quite a strict aerobe. 



A cultural study of the red torula yielded the following data: 



Growth occurs at temperatures ranging from about 6 C. to 

 about 37 C. 



The optimum is in the neighborhood of 25 C. 



Growth takes place on agar having a reaction ranging around 

 Ph 7.4, and also as low as Ph 3.0. No very definite optimum 

 seems to exist. 



