34 MEETING OF INSPECTORS OF APIARIES. 
They grow extremely slowly in coagulated blood serum, though kept at the 
body temperature, and there form very long filaments with comparatively few 
spores. 
In meat infusion kept at the temperature of the body they grow readily, 
causing muddiness, and after a few days a slight but not tenacious scum. The 
same peculiar odor is also developed here, more especially if the infusion con- 
tains a considerable amount of peptone. I do not think that there is any change 
in the reaction of the fluid; I generally make the infusions faintly alkaline, 
and after the growth of this organism in it it is faintly alkaline. 
These characteristics show that this is a new bacillus, and one which, so far 
as my knowledge and experience goes, is only found in foul brood. The constant 
presence in large numbers of a characteristic organism in a disease and its 
absence elsewhere must, according to our accumulating experience, afford a 
strong presumption that the organism is the cause of the disease. In the case 
of foul brood this matter has been completely proved by the following experi- 
ments, the details of which will be found in Mr. Cheshire’s part of this paper. 
With a cultivation in milk he sprayed a comb containing a healthy brood, 
allowing the spray to act only on a particular part of the comb. This part 
and no other became affected with foul brood. He has also succeeded in 
infecting adult bees by feeding them with material containing these cultivated 
bacilli. 
IT have also had the opportunity of watching the effect of feeding flies with 
material containing spores and bacilli. I was one day testing some milk in 
which these bacilli were growing; a large blue-bottle fly settled on it and com- 
menced to eat. I at once put a large glass funnel over the insect, leaving plenty 
of air. When I came to the laboratory twenty-four hours later, the fly was in 
the sitting posture on the table and was dead. Its juices were full of these 
bacilli, as shown by microscopical examination and by cultivation. 
Other animals which I have tested are more or less refractory to this bacillus. 
I have kept cockroaches for days in a box in which was milk containing these 
bacilli mixed up with sugar. I have also kept them in a box containing a piece 
of paper which had been thoroughly smeared with the spores. None of them 
died, but I can not be certain that in either case they ate any of the material, 
for I never saw them even near it. 
I inoculated two mice and one rabbit with a spore-bearing cultivation without 
effect. 
I injected half a syringeful of a spore-bearing eultivation into the dorsal. 
subcutaneous tissue of each of two mice. One of these died in twenty-three 
hours, the other seemed unaffected, but in the second case I doubt whether 
the full quantity was introduced. In the case of the mouse which died, the 
seat of injection and the neighbouring cellular tissue was found to be very 
cedematous, but no microscopic changes were apparent in the internal organs. 
Numerous bacilli were found in the cedematous fluid, as also a number of 
spores which had not been sprouted, and there were also a few bacilli in the 
blood taken from the heart. This was proved, of course, by cultivation as well 
as by microscopical examination. On examining sections of the various organs 
no morbid changes were found, and only very few bacilli were seen in the 
blood vessels. 
At the same time that I injected the mice I injected a syringeful of the same 
cultivation subcutaneously into a guinea pig. This animal died six days later 
with extensive necrosis of the muscular tissue and skin and cheesy-looking 
patches distributed through it. There was no true pus. On making sections 
of the necrosed tissue numerous bacilli, apparently Bacillus alvei, were seen, 
