Californian Bees. J. Ramsbottom. 87 
buoyant dancing being due to the copious evolution of gas bubbles 
from their surfaces. It is probably this movement that has led 
to their being called ‘‘ Bees.”’ 
The organism is the well-known Ginger-beer plant which was 
investigated by the late Professor Marshall Ward*. As the lumps 
move they shed yeast cells all round which increase and form a 
deposit at the bottom of the containing vessel: the liquid becomes 
viscous with slimy masses in it. Ward found that two organisms 
constitute the ginger-beer plant proper—a yeast, Saccharomyces 
pyriformis and a bacterium, Bacterium vermiforme: both are 
necessary for its formation and peculiar action. Other organisms 
can be grown out of both the lumps and the liquid but these are 
merely accessory or foreign organisms such as one would expect 
to find in a sugar solution exposed to the air. Ward reconstituted 
the ginger-beer plant by bringing together pure cultures of the 
yeast and the bacterium and showed that the specimens so 
produced acted like the original material. He regarded the rela- 
tion between the two species as one of symbiosis. ‘‘ The Schizo- 
mycete is favoured by obtaining some substance or substances 
directly they leave the sphere of metabolic activity of the yeast- 
cells; it can benefit by the presence of these substances even apart 
from the living yeast, though to a less extent. 
The yeast, on the other hand, benefits by these substances 
being removed and destroyed, hence its renewed and continued 
activity—as evinced by the steady and copious evolution of 
carbon dioxide for weeks, and the corresponding increase of the 
yeast-cells by budding—when the symbiosis is established.”’ 
The origin of the plant is unknown. Ward obtained a certain 
amount of evidence showing that “‘the yeast (Saccharomyces 
pyriformis) is introduced from the grocers’ shops attached to the 
ginger and brown sugar employed in ordinary practice, while the 
bacterium (Bb. vermiforme) is introduced with the ginger.’’ That 
there was an “‘epidemic”’ similar to the present one about forty 
years ago is seen from the following note (Gardeners’ Chron. Xx1 
(1884), p. 542), by the late Mr Worthington G. Smith. 
“The Editor of the Gardeners’ Chronicle has several times been 
requisitioned by correspondents (mostly anonymous) for a 
scientific description of the ‘Ginger Beer Plant.’ The corres- 
pondents want to know its botanical name and native country. 
The writer of this note has also been tormented weekly, almost 
daily, on the same subject for two or three years. Every one has 
been asking him for the ‘regular Latin or Greek name’ of the 
‘Ginger Beer Plant.’ 
* The Ginger-Beer Plant, and the Organisms composing it: a Contribution 
to the Study of Fermentation-Yeasts and Bacteria. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. 
ser. B. CLXXXIII, pp. 125-197 (1893). 
