28 MEETING OF INSPECTORS OF APIARIES. 
tained in a journal to which few bee keepers can have access. It is 
as follows: 
On August 11th, 1884, Mr. Cheshire brought to me a piece of comb containing 
larvee affected with foul brood, with which I performed the following experi- 
ments: Selecting cells which were closed, but which Mr. Cheshire thought con- 
tained diseased larvie, I brushed them over with a watery solution of bichloride 
of mercury (1:1000) to destroy the organisms on the outside. With several 
forceps, that had been heated and allowed to cool, the covering of the cell was 
picked off so as to display the diseased larvee. These larvee were dead, of a 
yellowish color, and almost liquid, and on examination afterwards their juices 
were found to contain numerous moving bacilli. By means of a heated platinum 
wire, tubes of meat infusion rendered solid by gelatin (10 per cent), or by 
Japanese isinglass, were inoculated from several of these larvee and kept at a 
suitable temperature. Development of bacilli, microscopically similar to those 
seen in the juices of the larvee, occurred. The characteristics of this develop- 
ment will be presently described. Further, in the tubes, kept at the body 
temperature, there was not only a development of bacilli but also of spores. 
These bacilli, as seen in the larval juices, measure about ;,'55 inch in length and 
zos00 Inch in breadth. They are rounded or slightly tapering at their ends and 
often have a clear space near one end. In the juices of the larvze during life 
they apparently do not produce spores, although after death spores abound. 
In the cultivation in the peptonized meat infusion, rendered solid by agar-agar, 
the bacilli vary considerably in size, their average length being -,1,; inch, some be- 
ing as small as ;>/99 inch and others as large as 5,55 inch. When they have at- 
tained the latter size, division of the rod seems to begin. They are always somewhat 
pointed at their ends. Their average breadth is ;5455 inch, varying from ;;1,5, to 
25 00 
The spores are largish oval bodies, averaging in length ;,455 inch (varying from 
73100 tO yoz00 Inch), and in breadth 53455 inch (varying from 745, to 35455 inch). 
In the agar-agar material the spores are generally arranged side by side in 
long rows, and in old cultivations only a few bacilli can be seen, some forming 
spores, some without any indication of spores. That these small bacilli can 
produce such large spores seems at the first glance at a microscopical specimen 
almost inconceivable, but I have been able to trace on the one hand the develop- 
ment of the spores in the rods, and on the other the sprouting of the spores into 
adult bacilli. This can be done in the following very simple manner: 
Take a number of glass slides, each having a moderate-sized cell hollowed 
out in its middle; clean it and pass through a Bunsen flame several times to 
destroy any bacteria on its surface. With a brush apply a little vaseline around 
the depression, and then place the slide under a glass shade to keep it from 
the dust. Clean a number of cover glasses, purify them in the flame, and place 
them on a pure glass plate beneath another shade. With a fine, pure pipette 
put a small drop of sterilized cultivating fluid (meat infusion with peptone) on 
the center of each of these cover glasses; then with a fine platinum wire inocu- 
jate each of the drops with the spores, or with nonspore-bearing bacilli; rapidly 
invert them over the cell, press down the cover glass so as to diffuse the 
vaseline around its edge, and place the slides in an incubator kept at the 
temperature of the body. These slides are removed at different intervals of 
time, and as soon as each is taken out the cover glass is turned over and the 
drop of fluid rapidly dried. The specimen can then be stained, mounted in 
Canada balsam, and studied at leisure. This method seems to me to be much 
more satisfactory than the observation of the organisms swimming about in 
