256 A. B. MACALLUM. 
seen. The central body is, in Bitschli’s opinion, a nucleus. 
In or on this organ were observed granules which became red 
after treatment with hematoxylin, and were identified with 
the granules described by Ernst. Trambusti and Galeotti 
found in one stage of a very large bacillus isolated from 
drinking water, that the whole of the protoplasm stained uni- 
formly and deeply with safranin, while in a later stage of the 
same the stainable substance was converted into granules, dis- 
posed at the periphery and arranged in the form of a garland 
of oval outline. The granules eventually fused to form a 
homogeneous garland out of which arose from three to four 
elliptical rings, at first connected by their ends, but afterwards 
independent of each other, and in this condition became free. 
These changes the observers regard as analogous to those of 
mitosis in the cells of more highly specialised organisms. 
Schottelius! and Ilkewicz® have described structures in the 
bacterial cell which they regard as nuclei, and Sjobring ® 
claims to have found many of the phenomena of mitosis, as it 
obtains in the cells of higher organisms, exemplified in bacteria. 
The results of these observers appear to me to have been due 
to defective methods of technique. 
I find that in Bacillus subtilis, B. anthracis, B. mega- 
therium, B. tuberculosis, and in the root bacillus, there are 
granules like those described by Ernst and Babes, and which 
stain with hematoxylin, and in B. pseudosubtilis (?), in 
which there is only one granule to each rodlet, each granule is 
developed into a spore, the remaining protoplasm at the same 
time losing all its affinity for colouring matters. The struc- 
tures observed are the same whether alcohol, corrosive subli- 
mate, or heat has been employed for their fixation. 
Ernst found, as already stated, that the granules, except in 
the later stages, undergo solution in artificial gastric juice. 
1 «Beobachtung Kernartiger Kérper im Innern von Spaltpilzen,” 
‘Centralbl. fiir Bakt. und Parasitenkunde,’ vol. iv, 1888, p. 705. 
2 « Ueber die Kerne der Milzbrandsporen,”’ ibid., vol. xv, p. 261, 1894. 
* “Ueber Kerne und Theilungen bei den Bakterien,” ibid., vol. xi, p. 65, 
1893. 
