( 581 ) 
with an ample quantity’) of garden soil, from which the heaviest 
and roughest portion has been removed, but in which so much 
solid substance is left behind that in the nutrient liquid it forms 
a muddy deposit from 5 to 7 or more millimeters thick. The 
culture is effected in a thermostat at 37° C. After 12 hours already 
the liquid is in a strong fermentation, which lasts from 24 to 36 
hours, and whereby the surface is covered with a rough seum, 
produced by gas bubbles mounting up from the depth. Whilst 
the liquid itself remains wholly free from microbes, the micros- 
copical image of the deposit shows a luxuriant, pure or almost 
pure culture of a sarcine, of which the elementary cells measure 
for the greater part about 3.5 uw, so that the species belongs to 
the largest forms known, and the multicellular sarcine-packages are 
easily visible to the naked eye. The cells are colorless and 
transparent and the packages present irregular sides. Here and there, 
but much less generally, a brownish intransparent form is seen, 
with more regularly cubical packages of which the cells measure 
2 to 2,5 uw. 
The scum floating on the fermenting fluid consists of slime in 
which the evolved gas remains for a time imprisoned. This slime 
is produced by the outer side of the sarcine cells, whose walls 
for the rest consist of cellulose, which becomes violet-blue by zinc- 
chloride and jodine. This reaction was discovered in 1865 in the 
stomacal sarcine .by SURINGAR®), who on this account argued the 
vegetal nature of this organism, which fully corresponds to the 
small-celled fermentation sarcine. The large-celled form more resembles 
the figures which LINDNer*) gives of his Sarcina maxima, found, as 
he expresses it, in “Buttersäuremaischen”, hence, in wort wherein 
a spontaneous butyric fermentation. I am not, however, convinced 
that both these forms do really belong to two different species of 
sarcine, as it is well known that in this genus of microbes great 
morphological differences may occur in the same species. 
The gas is a mixture of about 75°/, carbonic acid and 25 °/, 
hydrogen; methan is not present. Besides, a moderate quantity of acid 
is formed, which for example, in a nutrient liquid with an acidity 
of 6 ce. per 100, may mount to 12 cc, a percentage only found 
back in the technical lactic fermentations. Furthermore a peculiar 
odor originates, reminding of the ordinary lactic-acid fermentation, by 
1) With Jittle soil fcr infection, the experiment becomes doubtful. 
2) W. F. R. Surinear, De sarcine (Sarcina ventriculi Goopsir), pag. 7, 
Leeuwarden 1865. Here very good figures are to be found. 
8) Mikroskopische Betriebscontrolle in den Gärungsgewerben, 3e Aufl. p. 432, 1901. 
