ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 227 



temperature. These structures, he states, cannot be seen in young culti- 

 vations. In support of the existence of flagella he gives some not 

 very convincing photomicrographs. 



After carefully describing the form and shape of the flagella and the 

 "thread-network" occasionally formed by them, Dr. Hinterberger per- 

 tinently asks whether the structures which he has described are really 

 portions of the bacilli in question, or whether they are only artificial 

 products due to faults in technique, or to the presence in his films of 

 portions of the nutrient medium. He replies to these questions in the 

 negative, but admits that his work is not sufficiently complete for him 

 to be absolutely certain. 



Formation of Agglutins. * — Prof. Neisser and Dr. Lubowski care- 

 fully investigated certain points in connection with the formation of 

 agglutinating substances present in the blood of animals, such as whether 

 the injection of agglutinated cultures of the B. typhosus is followed by 

 the formation of agglutins, and also whether the injection of similar 

 cultures tends to raise the agglutinative power previously possessed by 

 the serum of a given animal. Their experiments lead them to return a 

 negative answer to these questions. If, however, non-agglutinated culti- 

 vations of the B. typhosus were employed, as was done in their control 

 experiments, the injections were followed by a marked rise in the agglu- 

 tination value of the serum in each group of experiments. 



Preparation of Spores for Testing Methods of Disinfection, &c.f — 

 Dr. E. Weil comments upon the difficulty of obtaining strains of 

 anthrax bacilli which shall form spores which are equally resistant to 

 moist heat, to act as test objects in determining the relative values of dis- 

 infection apparatus or disinfection methods. The most suitable spores 

 for the purpose are such as will resist exposure to streaming steam at 

 100° C. for about ten minutes ; but unfortunately, when cultivated 

 under laboratory conditions the anthrax bacillus rapidly becomes attenu- 

 ated in so far as the resistance of its spores to moist heat is concerned, 

 though it may still retain a high degree of virulence. 



After trying various methods, the author discarded the use of an- 

 thrax spores in favour of those of the B. mesentericus ruber. These 

 spores possess much higher resistance, and it was therefore necessary to 

 devise some means of permanently lessening this resistance. Chemical 

 antiseptics being inadmissible, and the exposure to light unreliable, 

 Dr. Weil employed a water-bath regulated at 100° C, and after a series 

 of experiments, found that after exposing suspensions of the spores of 

 different strains of the B. mesentericus ruber to the action of streaming 

 steam for from 55 to 65 minutes, he could obtain spores which, when 

 dried on tbreads by a few hours' stay in a sulphuric acid desiccator and 

 tested in Professor Dunbar's steam oven, were only .capable of resisting 

 the action of streaming steam for a period of about 10 minutes. 



He states further that this diminished spore-resistance is a character- 

 istic that is transmitted from the parent spores to those formed in the 

 daughter cultures, thus showing that Darwinian principles hold good 

 even in the bacteriological world. 



■ Centralbl. Bakt., 1" Abt., xxx. (1901)lpp. 483-91. 

 t Tom. cit., pp. 500-4, 526-36 (1 fig.)- 



Q 2 



