OUR SOCIETY 155 



organism thut attracts your interest by some peculiarity or 

 abnormality. You isolate it, and put it by, with the intention 

 that at some convenient season you will investigate it further, 

 but alas, procrastination is the thief of time; the convenient 

 season does not come, and the organism probal)ly dies of exhaus- 

 tion, starved by inattention to its material needs. 



Now, if we had a clearing house the course would be different. 

 You would say, candidly, I have not the time to work out this 

 organism; it is interesting on account of its morphology or some 

 peculiarity of its culture; I shall send it to the clearing house 

 with a note as to whore it was found, and its pecuharities. It is, 

 therefore, duly dispatched, and on arrival at the clearing house, 

 those in charge will read the letter and note the pecuharities, 

 and will say, send this to John Doe, he is interested in this line 

 and is working on this particular group, or investigating this 

 irregularity, etc., or failing a student of this group, the organism 

 might be investigated by those in charge of the clearing house. 



This is a function that a well equipped and adeciuately staffed 

 museum might undertake — possibly the American Museum of 

 Natural History might institute a department charged with such 

 work. If this were possible it would be a great asset to our Society. 

 Failing such an organization, it might be possible to arrange for 

 some distribution through the Journal. 



X. A NEW DETERMINATIVE BACTERIOLOGY 



Those of us who teach and those who are engaged in general or 

 systematic studies, know the difficulties experienced in determin- 

 ing species. 



Frantic search of Chester, Migula, Matzuschita, of mono- 

 graphs here, of periodicals there, often fail to give any information 

 or assistance on the points we desire, and then we realise the 

 inadequate nature of our descriptions and our classifications, 

 for they are numerous. 



The Society, through the interest of some of its members, has 

 taken cognizance of the chaos in classification and has adopted 

 certain revisions which are helpful. 



