424 BACTERIA OF THE SPUTA 



We have already mentioned the club-shaped stems, two of 

 which, stained with gentian violet, are seen drawn in Fig. 26, 

 magnified to 1700 diameters. The club is generally long enough, 

 as in a ; but sometimes we meet short ones, as in d, which might 

 be called an incipient phase. In the first named specimen, the 

 club, although complete, is still quite bare, and, to all appearances, 

 represents a hardly-formed expansion, before the sterigmata and 

 the spores have germinated. In fact, in the Fig. 27 (same staining 

 and magnification) may be noticed an ear, on the whole larger 

 and with spores proportionally more conspicuous, exhibiting an 

 internal stem, club-shaped, and brilliantly coloured, quite dissim- 

 ilar from the pale and slender stems of the first series, but 

 analogous to the bare stem of Fig. 26. 



To our knowledge, these ears never reach the length of some 

 others having slender stems (see Figs, 12 and 16), which may 

 depend upon the comparatively limited length of the club-shaped 

 expansions. The spores of such ears are, besides, more conspic- 

 uous and pressed together, so as to form on both sides a sort of 

 zone or violet aureola, at a little distance from the stem ; and, 

 between this and the periphery, runs a clearer intermediate zone, 

 where the viscid substance is less coloured, but yet capable of 

 disguising the sterigmata. The light proceeding from the con- 

 denser must, in fact, cross first the deep violet zone, which 

 is next the slide, then the intermediate clearer substance (the 

 index of refraction of which is identical perhaps with that of the 

 peduncles), and finally the opaque violet zone, which overlooks 

 the cover glass. At any rate, the result of this optical combination 

 is to hide the peduncles. When in the solution of iodine we come 

 across such ears, the zones become mixed up, and we perceive, on 

 the whole, a triplex series of coloured granules, as is shown in 

 Fig. 13 of the previous Memoir, incompletely represented, which 

 would lead to the supposition that in these ears the secretion of 

 glair is more abundant and thick. ^ 



It appears, besides, that such ears are even more compact and 

 resisting to the mechanical agents of disintegration ; also, their 



^' After presenting this Memoir, we have made further researches (especi- 

 ally on the presence of such ears in the sputum of pneumonia, and on the manner 

 of detecting the peduncles), which we will soon make known. 



