REDDENING OF SALTED CODFISH. 973 



arrived from my own examination of the subject, without- being able to 

 add to it the results of the experience of others. The question, after 

 all, is one of dollars and cents, but looking at it abstractedly, as I have 

 been obliged to do, I think that my statement of the cause of the trouble 

 and of the examination of the two kinds of salt most generally used 

 should furnish useful hints to those who, from their occuiiatiou, are most 

 directly interested in the matter. 

 Yours, respectfully, 



W. G. FARLOW. 

 Cambridge, Mass., 



June 22, 1879. 



]^OTE. — With regard to the presence of Clathrocystis roseo-persicina 

 in salt coming from the Mediterranean, jjerhaps the following may have 

 some significance : In the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, series 2, vol. 

 9, p. 112, is an article entitled " Extrait d'un Memoire de M. F. Dunal, 

 sur les algues qui colorent en rouge certaines eaux des marais salins 

 Mediterraneens." In this article an attempt is made to explain the 

 presence of a red substance in the salt works at Villa Franca. M. Dnnal 

 denies that the redness is owing to the remains of the crustacean Arte- 

 mia salina, and maintains that the redness is due to a minute plant, 

 ProtococcKS salinus Dunal, found in the bottom of the tanks. It is not 

 impossible that the P. salinus of Dunal may be what is now known as 

 Clathrocystis rosea -per sicinia. The development of the last-named spe- 

 cies has occupied the attention of several botanists and zoologists, and 

 the reader interested in such matters is referred to Cohn's Beitrtige zur 

 Biolagie der Pflanzen, vol. 1, i)art 3, p. 157, and to an article on "A 

 peach-colored Bacterium," by Prof. E. Eay Lankaster, in the Quarterly 

 Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. 13, new series, p. 408, and to articles 

 by the same writer in subsequent numbers of the same journal. 



Besides the Clathrocystis which was found on the red codfish at Glou- 

 cester, another form of microscopic plant was observed, which deserves 

 at least a passing notice. Small colonies of cells, destitute of coloring 

 matter and arranged in fours, were not unfrequent on the infected codfish. 

 The absence of color and the arrangement of cells in fours at once 

 suggests the genus Sarcina, of which 8. ventricuU is found in the fliuids 

 vomited in certain diseases of the stomach, in the lungs, and occasionally 

 in other tissues. The species in question, however, differs materially 

 from S. ventricuU. The individual cells are larger and the colonies are 

 irregular in outline and not arranged in regular cubes as in S. ventricuU, 

 nor does the membrane inclosing the cells contain any silicate, as is said 

 to be the case in that species. Treated with strong acids, as nitric acid, 

 the cells at once exi)and and soon disintegrate. On seeing the species 

 on codfish, the first thing that struck me was the strong resemblance 

 which it bore to Gloeocopsa crepidinnm Thuret, except in the absence of 

 coloring matter. The Gloeocopsa is common on the wood- work of wharves 

 at Gloucester near high-water mark, and it might easily have been com- 



