364 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



days the turnip-juice was perfectly pellucid and free from 

 life. Two days' exposure to ordinary air sufficed to render 

 it muddy. After twelve days the pinch-cock was opened, 

 so as to allow a momentary inrush of the external air, which 

 was immediately checked by the reclosing of the cock. 

 Three days after, the infusion of the test-tube into which the 

 air first entered was muddy, and crowded with life. The 

 contamination did not reach the second test-tube. These ex- 

 periments completely verify the conclusion that, in Schulze's 

 experiment, water maybe substituted for sulphuric acid and 

 caustic potash without any alteration in the result {Proc. 

 Boy. Soc, No. 185). 



Action of very Low Temperatures on Bacteria. 



While the action of high temperature on Bacteria has 

 been frequently studied, few observations have been made as 

 to their behavior at low temperatures, but it has been found 

 that they stiffen at C, and are not killed at 18 to 25 

 C. Herr A. Frisch, by means of solid carbonic acid and ether, 

 exposed some putrefactive fluid Bacteria, and some forms of 

 Coccus and Bacterium in the morbid products of living or- 

 ganisms, to 87.5, and allowed them in the course of 2^ 

 hours to rise to 0. The result was, that the Bacteria in the 

 fluid withstood this low temperature, and grew rapidly when 

 transferred to a suitable nutritive fluid (Der JVaturforscher, 

 No. 5, 1878). 



Staining and Preparation of Bacteria. 



The difficulties which are involved in the study of Bacte- 

 ria arise partly from the gaps which appear in the classifi- 

 cation of these minutest of all living organisms, and the new 

 forms which are continually cropping up, and partly from 

 the microscopes employed possessing little power of illumi- 

 nation and definition, although furnished with sufficiently 

 high powers; and their investigation is a matter of enormous 

 difficulty on account of their extreme minuteness, their weak 

 refracting power, and their motion. Dr. W. A. Ilaupt pro- 

 poses to stain the whole fluid which contains the Bacteria, 

 at the patient's bedside, or the dissecting-table, the micro- 

 scopical examination to be made at any convenient time. 

 For the purpose of staining, he prefers aniline- violet, fuchsine, 



