BOG Dallinger, Drysdale's u. Dallinger'a Untersuchungen an Biflagellaten. 



this hour I ain in no way involved in this matter. I have never pro- 

 fessed to adopt, or to criticise when adopted, any designations of the 

 seven septic organisms on which the work was done. Nor can I of 

 necessity recognize any assumed identity now. One thing for example 

 peculiar to the ,,biflagellate" form with which France assumes he 

 is dealing, was, and still is, the comparative difficulty with which it 

 is obtained. In our monograph of its life -history (read in 1874) we 

 make the following remarks viz ,,Prolouged work with infusions has 

 led us to make observations concerning them which, although without 

 explanation .... seem to us of sufficient importance for note. Our 

 first maceration was a cod's head; it was freely exposed to the air, 

 but excluded from the light. For two months nothing at all remar- 

 kable presented itself. Abundance of Bacteria termo and B. lineola 

 and amoebae were found. But at the exspiratiou of the twelfth week 

 the form to be described (the ,,biflagellate") appeared -survived for 

 three months and two weeks to the almost complete exclusion even- 

 tually of other forms and then was supplanted by other monads, 

 some of which have been described by us in former papers. 



,,This maceration was made from ordinary water supplied by the 

 company on the Cheshire side of the Mersey. The same year, in the 

 same place another cod's head, and the head of a salmon were ma- 

 cerated in separate vessels. It was later in the year and the produc- 

 tion of vital forms was slower; yet in the course of four months the 

 same phenomena as those described above took place; the only dif- 

 ference being that the form that we are about to describe (the ,,bi- 

 flagellate") did not persist so long". 



,,In the autumn of the same year another cod's head maceration 

 was made in Liverpool from the ordinary water supplied to the town. 

 This up to the spring of the following year showed no trace of the 

 form in question .... while a maceration .... made in april 1873 

 under the same circumstances .... was found in april 1874 to swarm 

 with the peculiar form in question". 



It must be remembered that our work was not casual or transi- 

 tory, but persistent, extending without break over years; and even 

 when we had completed our study of a given form, in persueing the 

 study of others akin to it, we were constantly seeing the former in 

 its various stages again, and so through a long period were provided 

 with opportunities for the revision of our previous work. 



Moreover during our many years of joint work in the study of 

 these organisms we followed a definite, and as we believed then, and 

 still believe, an essential method, from which we never deviated. 



1. We persued independent observations, mostly in the same room, 

 and with precisely similar instruments, on the same organism from 

 the same maceration; and for this purpose my colleague lived with 



