228 SUMMARY OF. CUERENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



the retention by the soil of moisture in the hygroscopic form. 



2. Bacteria resist desiccation longer in a rich clay-loam than in sand. 



3. If bacteria, before being subjected to desiccation in sand, are 

 suspended in the solution extracted from a rich clay-loam, they live 

 longer than after suspension in physiological salt solution. 4. Such 

 clay -loam solution contains substances which have a protective influence 

 upon bacteria subjected to desiccation. 



Liquefying Fluorescent Bacillus.* — M. A. Botez obtained from a 

 bed-sore of a tabetic, and also from the patient's blood, a liquefying 

 fluorescent bacillus, which was agglutinated by the patient's serum in 

 the proportion of 1-200. The bacillus is motile, and while some of the 

 rodlets stain by Gram's method, others do not. Most of the media 

 were coloured green or yellowish, but the pigment was not extracted by 

 chloroform. Gelatin and blooil serum were liquefied. The organism 

 was found to be highly pathogenic to rabbits and mice. 



Tuberculosis in the Pig.f — M. P. Chausse gives in these two 

 papers an interesting study of the special features of porcine tuberculosis. 

 As the result of his investigations the author is persuaded that the pig 

 is almost without exception infected through the tonsils and cervical 

 lymphatic glands, the explanation probably being that these animals are 

 usually fed on waste milk, mixed from various sources. Other animals 

 — ^man, the ox and the dog — are usually infected with tuberculosis by 

 inhalation. The commonest lesions are met with in the peripheral 

 lymphatic glands and bony structures ; the kidneys, as with man, the 

 ox, the dog, and the guinea-pig, are rarely involved. Pneumonic 

 lesions are only met with when the condition becomes generalized, in 

 which stage of the disease the lungs, in common with the liver and 

 spleen, become much affected. The pig is exceedingly sensitive to 

 tuberculous infection, the encysted and latent lesions so commonly met 

 with in other animals being the exception rather than the rule, while 

 generalized infection, which is relatively uncommon in the ox and in 

 man, is the form of porcine tuberculosis most commonly seen. 

 Retrogressive changes and fibrous encapsulation do not therefore occur, 

 but Oil the other hand caseation is early and frequently met with. To 

 sum up, porcine tuberculosis is mostly of the bucco-pharyngeal type, 

 while human and bovine tuberculosis are mostly of the inhalation type ; 

 the proportion between the two moods of infection in each case being 

 determined by the varying conditions under which the infective material 

 is introduced. 



Sporotrichum Beurmanni as a Saprophyte of Wheat. | — A. 

 Sartory has isolated from an ear of corn a species of fungus which 

 answers in all its morphological and cultural characters to the human 

 parasite Sporotrichum Beurmanni {^q Beurm. and Goug.). The virulence 

 of the fungus for the rat was at first nil, but by means of passage from 

 animal to animal, a rapid and fatal septicaemia was finally obtained. 



* G.R. Soc. Biol. Paris, Ixxix. (1916) pp. 89-90. 



+ Ann. Inst. Pasteur, xxix. (1915) pp. 556-600, and 633-47. 



: G.R. Soc, Biol. Paris, Ixxviii. (1915) pp. 740-2. 



