48 MEETING OF INSPECTORS OF APIARIES. 
odor of stale, but not ammoniacal urine, or what may be better deseribed as a 
shrimpy smell; and this peculiar odor has been found by Cheshire to be dis- 
tinctive of diseased larvee, Klamann and Howard both state that a peculiar 
odor resembling that of the diseased larve may be noticed in artificial cultures. 
The effects of desiccation.—I have already noticed, under the head of ‘ Rela- 
tion to free oxygen,” that the spores of B. alvei have considerable vitality in 
withstanding desiccation. My experiments prove conclusively that the spores 
are extremely hard to kill by desiccation and in this respect resemble those of 
anthrax, which are known to resist thorough desiccation for a number of years. 
One experiment which showed this characteristic was as follows: An agar 
plate completely covered with a typical growth of B. alvei was allowed to dry 
out completely, and was left exposed to the ordinary light of the room for seven 
months, and at the end of that time, a portion of the film was scraped off with 
a knife, placed on suitable medium and incubated, with the result that a typical 
growth immediately ensued. 
Spores on cover glasses were exposed to September sunlight (latitude 43°) 
for varying periods of time, and growth occurred after four, six, and seven 
hours’ exposure. The age of the spores varied from five days to eighteen 
months; and spores three months old were not killed by seven hours’ exposure. 
From the symptoms given in this paper the disease with which 
Professor Harrison worked was doubtless American foul brood. 
From the discussion of geographical distribution this is also evi- 
dent, for he says: “ I have examined diseased larve from Canada, 
from Europe, * * * Cuba, and thirteen States of the Union, 
‘ranging from New ‘York to California and from Michigan 
to Florida.” American foul brood is thus widely distributed, but 
from all these specimens Professor Harrison obtained a_ bacillus 
which he called Bacillus alvet. Since we now know that Bacillus 
alvei is found in European foul brood and not in American foul 
brood, it is evident enough that the germ must have been another 
bacillus. European foul brood, as far as the author is able to learn, 
is not found in Canada nor Cuba, and, although now found in 
several States in the northeastern United States and spreading, is 
not, as Professor Harrison would have us believe, widely distributed 
in the United States. 
How can this be accounted for? The only way open seems to be 
in the identification of the bacillus. I do not feel qualified to pass 
judgment on the accuracy of the description of Professor Harrison, 
but the matter has been referred to Doctor White, and he assures 
me that the description just quoted fits the bacillus which is 
described as Bacillus A as well as it does Bacillus alvei. If this is 
true, we can only conclude that Professor Harrison, not knowing of 
the existence of two diseases, made a serious error in his identi- 
fication. In no place does he speak of any difficulty in obtaining 
cultures from American foul brood. For comparison, Doctor White’s 
description of Bacillus A (possibly B. mesentericus) is here quoted. 
