ON A REMARKABLE BACTERIUM {STREPTOCOCCUS) 

 FROM WHEAT-ENSILAGE. 



By Oscar Katz, Ph.D., M.A. 



(Plate XII.) 



A short time ago I obtained through the kindness of Mr. A. 

 Bruce, Chief Inspector of Stock for New South Wales, some of 

 the wheat-ensilage which had been used at Coonong, Urana 

 District, N.S.W., as food for horses, amongst which a fatal 

 epidemic, though of short duration, subsequently broke out. 

 The samples under notice were of three descriptions : one was 

 labelled as " fresh ensilage," anotheras " three or four days exposed 

 showing mould fungus, as given to the horses," a third "fully 

 developed mould fungus." 



Among the micro-organisms — in all, three kinds of bacteria, and 

 two kinds of moulds — which I cultivated out of the last-mentioned 

 sample, there was one bacterial species that especially struck my 

 fancy, and is interesting in more than one respect. 



Starting with an infusion of the particular sample in a 

 sterilised *6 p.c. common salt solution in a test-tube, and cultivating 

 a minute part of it (or even a dilution of this minute part) 

 in 10 p.c. nutritive gelatine on glass plates, for a few days, 

 and at a temperature of about 20° C. (68° F.), one finds, at the 

 surface of the layer of gelatine, amidst vegetations of the other 

 micro-organisms, small greyish-white to slightly yellowish-white 

 colonies (PI. XII, fig. 1, x), having — at least the larger ones — their 

 outlines irregularly crenate or emarginate. With the advancing 

 enlargement of these aggregations or colonies, liquefaction of the 

 gelatine underneath the latter commences, and the colonies 

 themselves now present beautiful whitish substantial patches, the 



