100 



DEPAnTMEXT OF THE XAVAL SERVICE 

 TABLE I. 



It will be seeeu from this table that with, the exception of the skate, the media 

 bear a close resemblance to the fresh meat in their titre. The discrepancy in the 

 skate is probably due to the rather frequent variation of the urea and ammonia con- 

 tent of the meat, a condition said to be common for elasmobranchs. 



As far as iwssible all the material was obtained at the same time and the media 

 madfe up from fresh material. 



To determine whether a relatively small difference in the time of death of a fish 

 made any appreciable variation in its titre, cold aquaeous extracts from various fishes 

 were titrated, allowed to stand for sixteen hours, and at the end of this time titrated 

 again. Xo difference was found in the titre. 



A Rose fish (Sehastes marinus, Linnaeus) was now allowed to putrefy, and four 

 different strains of bacteria in pure culture were isolated at random. 



The followin": are the main characteristics of the organisms used^: — 



Alpha. — 'On agar plate small round colonies, light greyish yellow, sharply lim- 

 ited. Oram negative rather long diplococci, occurring occasionally in short 

 chains of four. Nonmotile and does not ferment lactose or dextrose broth. 



Beta. — On agar plate pale green tiny whetstone colonies. Gram negative rods, 

 nonmotile. Produces acid but no gas in lactose and dextrose broth. 



Gamma. — On agar plate tiny white sharply demarcated round colonies. Gram 

 positive thick diplococci, nonmotile. Does not ferment lactose. Produ'ces 

 acid in dextrose broth. 



Deltat — On agar plate white pin-point colonies. Gram negative rods, actively 

 motile. Does not ferment lactose. Produces acid in dextrose broth. 



"With these bacteria eight sets of plates were prepared. Each set consisted of 

 four plates representing the four bacteria plated on the same fish agar from the dilu- 

 tion made in the same fish broth. 



Thus the sets can be diagrammatically represented, as in Table II. 



