264 Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History. 



If the body of a diseased larva be cut across and a cover 

 glass be pressed against the cut end of the intestine, or, still 

 better, if the larva be opened lengthwise, the stomach removed 

 and laid open separately, so that a droplet of the pure contents 

 of the alimentary canal may be obtained, the fluid portion of 

 these contents will be seen to swarm with infinitesimal gran- 

 ules identical in appearance with those found in the blood, ex- 

 cept that they are, on an average, often appreciably larger and 

 are occasionally more or less oval in outline. These same forms 

 m ay also be found in the fluid excreta escaping from the vent of 

 the still living larva. If the specimen has been dead some time, 

 so that the sooty discoloration of the surface has occurred, the 

 fluids both of the alimentary canal and of the body at large 

 will often be found to contain, besides myriads of the above 

 spherules, various other forms clearly recognizable as septic 

 bacteria, — among these, members of the genus Bacterium, easily 

 distinguishable by their oval form and by the manner in which 

 they actively propel themselves across the field of the micro- 

 scope. Rod-like bacilli may also appear in the fiuids at this 

 time, equally active, and evidently moving by means of flagella, 

 especially in the vicinity of the bubbles of air which may be in- 

 cluded in the fluid under the cover glass. Occasionally these lat- 

 ter bacterial forms may be found in smaller numbers even before 

 death, very rarely in the perivisceral fluids, but not very uncom- 

 monly in the contents of the alimentary canal. Still they are 

 infinitely less abundant than the Micrococcus-like spheres 

 already mentioned, even long after the death of the larva. 



The most characteristic post mortem phenomenon is the 

 rapid softening, decay, and deliquescence of the body, the whole 

 of which may be converted, in an hour or two after death, into 

 a dirty fluid mass which the rotten skin is barely sufficient to 

 hold together. This breaks at a touch, allowing the fluid con- 

 tents to escape. 



tents being otherwise fluid. Many of the cells were not full, areas 

 occuring which the dancing particles did not invade. Occasionally 

 an unaltered nucleus would be seen in the midst of the corpuscular 

 contents of the cell. The fat globules intermingled were easily dis- 

 tinguished from the above cells by their very different refracting 

 power, and were always free from the spherical granules. They 

 were less than half as numerous as the pale cells. The average size 

 of the granules was not far from .66 u. 



