268 DE. E. KLELX. 



Note on a Pink Torula. 



By 



E. Klein, IVI.D., F.R.S., 



Joint Lecturer on General Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical School 

 of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. 



Some time ago I examined for my colleague at St. Bartholo- 

 mew's Hospital, Dr. W. J. Russell, F.R.S., a sample of dis- 

 tilled water contained in a water bottle, through which 25 cubic 

 feet of London fog air had been passing every hour for twenty- 

 four hours. In this water were present, besides numbers of 

 soot and dirt particles, large numbers of mycelia, or what 

 appeared to be the mycelium of penicillium and mucor. 



There were also present bacilli in the shape of longer or 

 shorter, apparently smooth threads, and also a few ordinary 

 torula cells, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. With this water I 

 inoculated a few test-tubes plugged with sterilised cotton 

 wool containing neutral, or slightly acid pork broth, such as 

 I used for other cultivation purposes (see my paper in this 

 Journal, January, 1883), and placed them in the incubator at 

 32° C. After several days there was present in the test-tubes 

 a fair amount of a whitish, or rather colourless nebulous sedi- 

 ment, which, when examined under the microscope, was com- 

 posed of the most exquisite threads singly and in spiral bundles of 

 the above bacillus. There were also present some short bacilli 

 of the above kind ; they were all non-moving. The bundles 

 of spirally convoluted threads were identical with the typical 

 cable-like bundles of Bacillus anthracis, and it would have 

 been very difficult to recognise a diflference at first sight ; but 

 they were not, of course, anthrax bacilli, as was soon ascer- 

 tained by experiment. Besides these bacilli there were pre- 



