The Microscope. 139 



material, and, as evidence that the colored ends have a greater degree 

 of specific gravity as well as chemical composition, you will see, in 

 the continual tumbling about and turning over and over of these 

 objects, a white, round, or nearly so, colorless object, directly under 

 the eye, or numbers of these objects. When the germs in such a 

 hanging-drop culture have died fi'om want of a sufficiency of nutri- 

 ent material, you may see a large number of these objects, which 

 could be easily mistaken for spores. But if we inoculate a new 

 hanging- drop culture from the same material used to prepare the 

 former, it will be found impossible to fall into any such serious error, for 

 it will be easily seen that these non-colored, refracting points keep 

 continually going out of sight, their place being taken by the coc- 

 coid, non-refracting point still attached to the other end of the white 

 substance, and by watching one and the same organism in its con- 

 tinual turning over, first one appearance and then the other will be 

 presented to the eye, until the second coccoid end has become 

 detached. (Fig. 5.) 



What becomes of the uncolored, transparent middle piece? 



I do not know! 



It appears, however, as if it underwent an almost immediate 

 process of dissolution the moment it has become free from both of 

 its polar attachments. That this substance does not represent a 

 spore condition, or have any relation to spores, is to my mind entirely 

 beyond all question, as I have searched most diligently for spores 

 in old and fresh cultures and others, made at all kinds of tempera- 

 tures, ■ within the biological limits of these organisms, my search 

 being inspired by the description of ivhat I now pronounce a 

 forgery of a germ, which represents a spore, as the cause of swine 

 plague, by Mr. Salmon, in 1885, and again in 1886, as the cause of 

 another porcine pest, to which Mr. Salmon now gives the name of 

 " Hog Cholera." This Salmon object does not exist, never has 

 existed, and never ivill have any etiological connectiofi ivith the 

 American swine plague. In my first published description of the 

 micro-organism of the swine plague, I gave an erroneous descrip- 

 tion of the manner in which the coccoid- ends became freed from the 

 white or connective substance. This ivhite, non-refracting, uncolor- 

 able material does not become extended to nothing and then break 

 in two, leaving the coccoid ends ivith a delicate, colorless flagellum 

 or spermatozoid tail, temporarily attached to one side, as I then 

 said, and as Detmers described it in 1880, but the separation of 

 these ends is direct and by sharp segmentation. Were it otherwise, 

 we could not see the sporoid, colorless ends of so many of these 

 germs ivhen freed from their appropriate pole ends. 



