LEAFLET V 

 ROUTINE TESTS FOR THE DESCRIPTIVE CHART 



MORPHOLOGICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL 



Introduction 



The Society of American Bacteriologists issues Descriptive Charts 

 for use in characterizing bacterial species. The Charts are blank forms 

 on which the characteristics of any culture under investigation are 

 to be recorded, at least one chart to be used for each culture studied. 

 The Manual of Methods for Pure Culture Study of Bacteria was 

 originally published to secure uniformity in the methods used for 

 determining these characteristics. At the present time the scope of 

 the Manual has become much broader than this, and practically all 

 the methods covered by the original Manual are now included in this 

 leaflet. 



The methods described in this leaflet are intended primarily for 

 aerobic saprophytes, and cannot therefore be considered applicable 

 in general to obligate parasites or strict anaerobes. Leaflet III must 

 be consulted in studying the latter group; while Leaflet VII gives 

 methods specially applicable to animal pathogens. Special methods 

 for plant pathogens are given in Leaflet X. In the case of other 

 special groups, the investigator will often find the methods given 

 here to be unsatisfactory and will therefore be forced to modify 

 them or to use others more suited to the group in question. 



The Descriptive Charts 



There are two Descriptive Charts, each printed on 83^2 by 11 inch 

 sheets of heavy paper: the Standard Descriptive Chart, and the 

 Descriptive Chart for Instruction. The general plan of each is to 

 have the body of it consist, under various headings, of a series of 

 blanks to be completed and descriptive terms to be underlined, as 

 the various characteristics of the cultures are determined. In ad- 

 dition to this, there is a place on the margin for recording the most 

 important characteristics by a system of numerical notation. 



The special feature of the Standard Descriptive Chart is that 

 all the most important characteristics of an organism may be re- 

 corded on the front of the sheet, partly in the margin, partly in the 

 larger section at the right, while the fermentative reactions are to be 



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