EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS. 207 



and the fermentation industries generally. A brief statement of his work 

 follows : 



Report of Research Associate F. W. Fahian. 



During the past year, in addition to my regular teaching schedule, T 

 have written up and have had accepted by the Station Council, Tech- 

 nical Bulletin No. 00, entitled ''The Influence of Manufacturing Opera- 

 tions on the Bacterial Content of Ice Cream." This work was done 

 with R. H. Cromley, a former student. Continuing further investiga- 

 tions along this same line, I have completed a study of the influence of 

 homogenizing on the bacterial content of ice cream, and have started 

 work on the influence of freezing on the bacterial content of ice cream 

 both of which I hope to publish at an early date. 



In addition to the above work, I have analyzed several samples of 

 spoiled honey and isolated several organisms causing the spoilage. I hope 

 to be able to do more work with spoiled honey and get suflQcient data 

 for an understanding of the causes, nature, and prevention of the 

 trouble. I have recently taken over that part of the work of R. L. 

 Tweed which had to do witli fermentation and with the sending out of 

 vinegar cultures in addition to the large number of samples of vinegar 

 that this laboratory is called upon to analyze during the year. • 



[F. W. FABIAN.] 



In our report of last year we called attention to tbe fact that Miss 

 Antoinette Trevithick had been appointed to a position in the Bureau 

 of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture. 

 Her work has been carried on in this laboratory since September 15, 

 1922, under this appointment and has consisted in a continuation of 

 studies of a preliminary character conducted by her as an advanced stu- 

 dent in bacteriology during the previous year. The co-operative arrange- 

 ment will continue during the ensuing year. Her report as submitted 

 to the Bureau of Plant Industries follows : 



Report of Antoinette Trevithick on Flax Retting. 



The object of my work is to determine the micro-organisms or group 

 of micro-organisms best suited to flax retting, and to determine methods 

 of propagating them, and the optimum environmental factors with the aim 

 of producing uniform and superior quality of fiber. Since starting my 

 work September 15, 1922, I have accomplished the following results: 



I have read all the available literature on pure culture and water 

 retting in general, also on pectin. I have isolated and purified 91 cul- 

 tures obtained from Japanese, Chilean, Dutch, Irish and Courtrai retted 

 fiber and have tried these out for retting ability on small quantities of 

 sterilized straw and river water. By this process 48 cultures have been 

 eliminated as non-retters. Those which have been retained as retters 

 will be tried out on larger quantities of sterilized straw and eventually 

 on non-sterilized straw. I am running a number of cultures at the same 

 time under the same conditions in order to be able to compare the fibers. 

 From my work so far it appears that I have found the organisms re- 

 sponsible for retting. As yet I have not been able to make a very 



