246 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
NOTE ON A PINK TORUES 
By E. Kuen, M.D., F.R-S. 
OME time ago I examined for my colleague at St. Bartholomew’s 
Hospital, Dr. W. J. Russell, F.R.S., a sample of distilled 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 pur- 
poses, 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 sediment, which, when examined 
under the microscope, was composed 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 anthracts, 
and it would have been very difficult to recognise a difference at 
first sight ; but they were not, of course, anthrax bacilli, as was 
soon ascertained by experiment. Besides these bacilli there were 
present in the culture numerous cells of the yeast Saccharomyces 
cerevisie. The cells are oval, consisting of a limiting membrane 
and a homogeneous, highly refractive protoplasm, and in it at one 
place one or two vacuoles. In some of them there was one large 
bright corpuscle present at one side of the protoplasm. In some 
the protoplasm appears slightly granular. The cells are of different 
sizes, some twice as big as others. ‘Their sizes are as follows: the 
big cells o.cog mm. by o.o1 mm., the small ones 0.005 mm. by 
0.008 mm. ‘The small ones are evidently young forms, since they 
could be seen to sprout out, and to become constricted off from 
bigger ones. 
As regards the process of reproduction, it appeared to me to be 
that of gemmation only. Hereby large groups of cells, some 
chain-like, were formed, which groups by enlargement become soon 
confluent into larger masses. 
The pork broth, kept at 32° C. for several weeks, became so con- 
centrated, that when taken out of the incubator and allowed to 
cool, almost solidified. Keeping it in this state at the ordinary 
