24 Cultivation of Microscopic Fungi. [Tunlai, jln.TmS'' 



factive fluids determining the formation of yeast-cells in the external 

 fluids which pre\iously contained none; in other cases yeast- cells 

 being found in the tube and molecules or micrococcus in the beaker. 

 From these many and varied experiments, they consider it probable 

 " that some of the bacteria and micrococcus germs are really fungoid 

 in character, and capable of being developed into higher forms." 



Although they found no fungus germs in the blood of many 

 healthy and diseased animals, in others, germs existed in the blood 

 during life, as they developed in the blood in the " vacuum tubes " 

 filled from them ; but they question whether those germs would be 

 developed without some " dead organic matter as a pabulum." 

 The common mildews are stated to stand, in point of frequence, 

 thus : penicilhum, then mucor, next aspergillus, these varying as 

 to growth, colour, size, &c., in many ways. 



The conditions under which bacteria and the minute germs of 

 fungi germinate in the living economy of either vegetable or animal 

 are very imperfectly known, and probably are at the first very 

 trivially altered from the normal state; but once permit these 

 minute bodies a footing, as it were, in the economy, and if retained 

 at any one point or organ rather than another, from the rapidity 

 of development, serious effects might be expected — (according to 

 some botanists, cells in some fungi can be produced at the rate of 

 96,000,000 per minute, see Peunetier, 'L'Origine de la Vie,' p. 27) 

 — lead to rapid decay in the cells and tissues, the formed material 

 supplying the " dead organic matter " for their pabulum ; then the 

 secondary deposits may become deficient, and the catalytic changes 

 induced by their presence so destroy the relation or balance of 

 those efforts, at harmonic action, which are present in shght devia- 

 tions from health, that increased sickness may follow. 



That the protoplasm itself is converted into bacteria or fungoid 

 germs is to me doubtful. In the petals of flowers, especially 

 EschoUzia, some of the cells may often be seen filled with these 

 moving bodies, supplanting the place of the normal plasma, gra- 

 dually extending their domain into neighbouring cells and hastening 

 decay ; yet we are not in a position to say such germs were not 

 introduced from without either by the spongioles of the rootlets or 

 by the stomata. The duration of their life is also undetermined, . 

 and, if at all in proportion to the rapidity of their increase, must 

 be short ; but if originally reserved for ulterior uses, this may be 

 reversed, and their power of resistance to increased temperature, &c., 

 reach far beyond the point at which higher organisms perish. The 

 cumulative evidence at present does not appear to sufficiently 

 preponderate either way, to settle this controversial and difficult 

 question. 



