PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON PHOSPHORESCENT' 

 BACTERIA FROM SEA- WATER. 



By Dr. Oscar Katz. 



Influenced by a memoir recently published by Dr. Fischer, on 

 a light-producing bacteri>im found in sea-water near the Danish 

 Island of St. Croix, in the West Indies (1), and also by his state- 

 ments on another kind of fission-fungus derived from dead marine 

 fish out of the Baltic Sea and the Berlin Aquarium (2), I com- 

 menced to look for phosphorescent schizomycetes which might 

 occur in the sea-water of our vicinity (Sydney). My endeavours 

 have hitherto proved so far successful that up to now I have been 

 able to obtain three kinds of this \ery interesting group of micro- 

 organisms, which are capable of cultivation in various nutritive 

 substances, which can be transferred to marine animals (fish, crus- 

 taceans), so as to show what often happens spontaneously (so- 

 called self-phosphorescence of fishes, <kc.), and which on being added 

 to common sea-water are able to render this luminous in such a 

 way that it pi-oduces an effect similar to certain kinds of what is 

 known under the general name of phosphorescence of sea-water. 



(1) " Bacteriologische Untersuchungen auf einer Reise nach Westindien " 

 von Dr. Fischer, Mariuestabsarzt. II. " Uebereinen lichtentwickelndeu ia 

 Meerwasser gefundenen Spaltpilz, Zeitschrift f. Hygiene, Bd. II., Heft 1, 

 Leipzig, 1887, pp. 54-92. 



(2) Addendum to the above publication, pp. 92-95. A paper by Dr. 0. 

 Hermes on, as I must believe, the same bacterial species, which he has 

 named Bacterium jjhospherescens, I have not yet seen. A short note of it is. 

 given in "Nature," February 17, 1887, p. 377. 



