COXTliiliUTloX.s TO THi: f'YTor.OGY OF THE BACTEIUA. 463 



as tliey do iu tiie aggregate, ovei* many hundreds of pages. 

 Consequently, I crave forgiveness for the many sins of 

 omission which must be apparent to anyone who reads the 

 ensuing remai'ks. 



Metachromatic Granules. — Considerable confusion 

 exists iu bacteriological literature regarding a number of 

 granular cell-inclusions which I shall call metachromatic 

 granules. Recent work has, however, done much to clear 

 u[) this confusion, and I believe that the interpretation of 

 these granules is now perfectly plain, and thei-e is no cause 

 for any further misunderstanding regarding their nature and 

 significance. For an excellent summary of our present know^- 

 ledge of these bodies, I would refer the reader to a recent 

 paper by Guilliermond (1910). 



The first to observe these granules in Bacteria appears to 

 have been Babes. It was he, also, who subsequently named 

 them " metachromatische Korperchen.'^ There seems to be 

 little doubt that the majority of colourable granules which 

 have been described in bacterial cells really belong to this 

 class of bodies. Different observers have given different 

 names to the granules, and this has been largely the cause of 

 the confusion which at present exists regarding thetn. It 

 appears to me certain that the " metachromatic bodies '"' of 

 Babes, the '^sporogenic granules" of Ernst, the "red 

 gi-anules"' (in part only) of Biitschli, the "chromatin 

 granules" (in part) of Wahrlich and many others and of 

 Meyer's earlier papers, the "granules" of Fischer, the 

 " Volutanskugeln " of Grimme, tlie "' volutine " granules of 

 Meyer, the " toxigeu granules " of von Behring, the 

 "Babes-Ernst bodies" of many bacteriologists, and many 

 other kinds of granule described by many other workers — all 

 these are in reality the same, namely the bodies which I 

 shall call metachromatic granules. This name aptly 

 designates these bodies, and has been used throughout by 

 Guilliermond^ in his important researches into their nature; 

 and I hope — with him — that it wmU find universal acceptance 

 \ Giiilliermond's actual name is " corpusciiles metachroniatiques."' 



