III. PROPAGATION OF TRANSNATURATION & MULTIPLICATION 57 



Fig. 10 ; this may be due to the decrease in the effect of saponin per 

 unit mass when its great amounts are adsorbed to a blood cell. 



Experimental results obtained with saponin were thus fairly de- 

 monstrable, because haemolysis was completed in a short period ; how- 

 ever, with HgCla the situation was somewhat different because the 

 lysis by this salt needed an extremely long period, though similar re- 

 sults could be obtained. Likewise with antiserum and complement, the 

 same proved to be true. 



So far as our studies concern, at least some bacterial haemolysins 

 are of a particulate nature like viruses, and may cause a change in the 

 blood cell by a physicochemical force arising from their specific con- 

 figuration as in the case of viruses; the changes induced by haemolysin 

 may propagate through the protoplasm to cause haemolysis (22). Such 

 a change, however, fails to cause the production of replica correspon- 

 ding to the specific pattern of the haemolysin, so that the lysins can- 

 not multiply in red cells and therefore they are not viruses. 



Bacterial lysis caused by a phage can, in like manner, be explained 

 by the assumption that the association among elementary bodies in the 

 bacterial cell is loosened by the protoplasm change leading to the liber- 

 ation of elementary bodies which are usually endowed with virus action 

 by the change. It is known that when a bacterial cell is affected by a 

 great excess of phage particles, no active particle is produced. This 

 may result from a too rapid decomposition of the protoplasm to be 

 endowed with the pattern exactly identical with that of the phage. 

 Even in the case of lysis by a proper number of phage particles, the 

 virus cannot multiply in the absence of certain nutrients or in the 

 presence of metabolic "inhibitors" (23) presumably because of a similar 

 failure of the replica formation. 



