374 TransacfAons of the Societii. 



related to the yeasts or not, what appears to happen is this : — 

 A giant form will start the process of single, or multiple, gemma- 

 tion. I have not seen one of these buds actually separate from 

 the mother-cell. But I have seen them grow from extremely 

 minute buds to a considerable size, and in so doing give off 

 secondary and even tertiary buds. Each, or all, of these buds, 

 as well as the original mother-cell, may at the same time, or 

 independently in point of time, show one or more small rounded 

 bright bodies, by a clear process of endogenous segmentation. 

 They may be centrally placed or peripherally. Some of them will 

 rapidly enlarge, but they never appear to attain the size of a freely 

 growing, exogenously produced bud. Sometimes they will 

 suddenly disappear from the mother-cell, and as suddenly reappear 

 either at the periphery of the mother-cell or away from it. Some- 

 times they may be seen in v/hat appears to be a process of extrusion, 

 when they may take on a diplococcal form of about the size and 

 appearance of a normal meningococcus. In some of the mother- 

 cells, wdiilst this is going on, minute black spots will appear in 

 the mother-cell, sometimes centrally and sometimes peripherally. 

 Eventually they tend to become aggregated, in symmetrical 

 fashion, round the periphery of the cell, where they will often 

 assume a definitely minute bacillary form. In some cases, whilst 

 situated centrally, these minute black spots will move about with 

 incredible rapidity (? Brownian movements) inside the mother-cell, 

 and several times I have seen what appears to be a sudden extrusion 

 of one or more of these (? metachromatic) bodies, after which they 

 are no more seen. 



Whether these bodies may possibly be of the nature of swarm- 

 spores I cannot say. There is still a highly significant point to 

 mention, which is this. In every meningococcal culture I have 

 examined on the warm-stage in the liquid culture cell described, I 

 have noticed the development of rounded single cocci from the 

 normal size of a normal meningococcus into what appear to be giant 

 cocci, no evidence of binary fission being present. On the contrary, 

 if they are focused in the small stage, the appearance of diplo- 

 coccoid formation is often simulated, whilst on still further observa- 

 tion it is seen that the segments are unequal in size, the smaller 

 segment being in reality a minute bud in the process of formation. 

 These organisms appear, therefore, to be detached buds, developing 

 again into giant forms. 



And there, incomplete as the story is, I must for the present 

 leave it. 



