1885.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 81 



highest moment awaiting solution. The forms which give rise 

 to specific diseases were now being vigorously and almost ex- 

 clusively studied, to the detriment of investigation into forms 

 not connected with disease, from which, however, they must have 

 arisen at some past time. The discovery alleged to have been 

 made by Hans Biichner in t88o. of the convertibility of the 

 bacillus of the terrible disease anthrax, or splenic fever of cattle, 

 into the innocuous Bacillus siibtilis which it outwardly resembles, 

 and the converse, appears so startling to even a Darwinian, that 

 there must be error somewhere ; for if the law of actual varia- 

 tion, with all that- is involved in survival of the fittest, could be 

 so readilv brought into complete operation, and yield so pro- 

 nounced a result, where would be the stability of the organic 

 world ? There could be no permanence in anything living. Dr. 

 Dallinger agreed with Dr. Klein in considering Biichner's so- 

 called results utterly improbable. It was of the utmost import- 

 ance, however, to discover the true relations between such or- 

 ganisms, and the effect of changed conditions. Whether the 

 changes produced bv Pasteur in his attenuated virus were true 

 biological changes, or a mere physical and accompanying chem- 

 ical attenuation consequent on enfeebled nutrition or extended 

 dilution of some element of the virus, and consequently not in- 

 volving permanent change, was still unsettled ; but Dr. Dallin- 

 ger inclined to the latter view. The new organism referred to 

 above first came under notice about four years ago in an exhaust- 

 ed maceration of cod-fish which had decomposed in a broth 

 extracted from the boiling of rabbits, long kept at a temperature 

 of 90° to 91;° Fahr. By a complex and ingenious arrangement, 

 not only was the drop of fluid under examination, but also the 

 vapor surrounding it, kept at a necessary constant temperature 

 not varying more than one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, and 

 thus its form and movements were fully ascertained. The sub- 

 oval body, lens-shaped, destitute of internal organs, measured 

 about the TTTTroir in. in length, by the TTrixnT in. in breadth ; but it 

 had no fewer than six long thread-like flagella, or motile organs, 

 like whip-lashes, each three times as long as the body. One 

 very remarkable mode of locomotion resulting was comparable 

 only to wave-like leaps, reminding the observer of the move- 

 ments of a shoal of porpoises. The organism was never attached, 

 but by a free darting down upon and away from minute particles 



