980 NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



undergone any changes which would have influenced the bacterio- 

 logical examination. I selected those spots in which the lung lobes 

 were in a state of fresh, light brownish-red hepatisation. On 

 cutting across such spots I obtained an ample quantity of exuda- 

 tion-fluid. Samples of this were derived under proper precautions, 

 and used both for a direct observation under the mici'oscope, aud 

 for cultivation purposes. In cover-glass jneparations of such 

 material, which, it must be understood, is used as virus for protective 

 inoculations against pleuro-pneumonia in cattle, I expected to 

 find numbers of micro-organisms, especially of the micrococci 

 which Poels and Nolen regard as the cause of the disease ; but 

 instead of that (the preparations were stained with Loeffler's 

 methylene-blue) the result was a negative one, inasmuch as I had to 

 search for a considerable time before noticing a specimen that 

 could be pronounced to be a microbe. The cultivation-experiments 

 which I carried out with the same material, using nutrient gelatine, 

 nutrient agar-agar, and the latter medium with 6 per cent, 

 glycerine added to it, also resulted in showing a scarcity of micro- 

 organisms capable of growing en the above nourishing soils. A 

 medium-sized platinum-loop full of the mentioned fluid gave rise 

 to only a very limited number of colonies, which qualitatively 

 belonged to five or six different kinds, not all of them, however, 

 found in every sample, and a few of them only in one or two 

 colonies. The majority of them, as obtained on glycerine-agar-agar, 

 were small, short bacilli, forming elevated, dirty amber-yellow 

 coloured patches, which exhibited a vesicular structure, due to the 

 production of some gaseous substance. At a later date there was, 

 instead of these gas bubbles, a depression on the surface of the colo- 

 nies. Growing from a streak on the same soil they soon covered 

 it, notably at blood-temperature, with a thick, tenacious, gela- 

 tinous, amber-yellow layer, which, at an early stage, showed gas- 

 eruptions. I can asyet make no statement as to whether this microbe 

 plays any part in reference to the disease or not." 



In addition to cultures of the microbes referred to in the above 

 Note, Dr. Katz also exhibited a curious gelatine-culture of the 

 bacillus of mouse-septicaemia, in which two colonies only had 

 beautifully developed. 



