APPENDIX I 



EXPERIMENTS WITH B. TYPHOSUS re ADAPTATION 



BY 



F. B. BOWMAN, 1 M.B. (Toronto), 

 Major, C.A.M.C., O.C. No. 1 Canadian General Laboratory, Folkestone. 



At the request of Lieutenant-Colonel Adami, the following experi- 

 ments were conducted to prove or disprove certain conclusions 

 reached by him regarding the effect of environment on certain cultural 

 reactions of micro-organisms. 



Owing to the short time which was allowed for making these 

 investigations before the date set for the delivery of the Croonian 

 lectures, it was very questionable whether results of any interest 

 would be obtained. However, the following notes and charts seem 

 to bear out the contentions made by him, and to prove that instead 

 of chance variations in reaction we were dealing with direct adapta- 

 tion of the organism to its environment. 



No investigation of the biochemistry or the raison d'etre of results 

 will be made, but simply a statement of facts from observation of 

 the reactions from day to day. 



It is well known of course that certain bacteria in process of 

 growth cause fermentative reactions with different sugars, that is 

 that certain sugars would seem to be assimilable by certain organisms, 

 and that other sugars are useless as nutriment for their regular 

 growth and multiplication. The typhoid- colon group perhaps 

 illustrates this faculty better than any other, and for this reason 

 B. typhosus was used in this work. 



1 Major Bowman delivered his charts and results personally to me on the 

 morning of the delivery of the lecture, in which reference was made to them. 

 Upon forwarding the proof of these charts to Major Bowman, with the suggestion 

 that without explanatory notes they appeared somewhat bare, he writes : 

 19/10/17 : " Perhaps the enclosed could replace the proof you have sent me. 

 However, I have changed the proof slightly if you should still use that, and have 

 initialled corrections." It is these expanded notes that are here given. 



The observation given in the final paragraph is new to me, and deserves 

 further investigation. The probability is that the sugar in the neighbourhood 

 of the colonies had been used up, and that so acid production had ceased. — 

 J. G. A. 



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