REVIEW. 



83 



ing to the various conditions under which the experiments were 

 performed^ as the appended list will show at a glance. In in- 

 fusions boiled for less than fifteen minutes organisins were, 

 without exception, developed. The following gives the results of 

 several hundred experiments, carried on at various times during 

 a period of nine months. 



In hay infusions there were developed — 



4. Since it is clear that there must be some difi'erence between 

 the organisms which were able to survive so fiery an ordeal, and 

 those which are killed by it, we must make use of the micro- 

 scope, and our previous knowledge to settle the matter ; examined 

 thus, the survivors were all found to belong to the genus Bacillus, 

 and none to Bacterium, and among Bacilli to the species B. 

 suhtilis. A figure of them is given in the plate attached to the 

 paper, and a full discussion entered into, in this fourth para- 

 graph of the original memoir ; the only point to which I shall 

 here refer is that Cohn noticed, for the first form, felted gela- 

 tinous coils and chains of Bacilli embedded in the " glia,^^ in the 

 specimens obtained in these experiments. 



5. In the homogeneous interior of the Bacillus fibres there 

 appeared highly refractive corpuscles, each of which consisted 

 of a cylindrical doubly -contoured spore; always were these 

 arranged in rows. To follow these out, glasses a immersion were 

 required (as much, sometimes, as 1650 diameters) ; the Bacillus 

 fibres are there seen not to be truly unjointed, but to consist of 

 joints, each of which is about four times as long as it is broad; 

 within each is a spore, which does not quite fill the space ; their 

 mode of development seems to be comparable to that of Nostoc, 

 or Cijlhidrospermum. The chains of Bacilli separate into their 

 constituent joints. When the spore leaves the mother-cell it 



