SYSTEMATIC AND DESCRIPTIVE. 125 



numbers in the blood and organs after death, and 

 in the intestinal discharges. 



A drop of the broth injected into the connective 

 tissue in the region of the pectoral muscles causes 

 the death of the fowl the following day, with charac- 

 teristic pathological changes.* If a culture be kept 

 for some time, and a fowl be then inoculated with 

 it, instead of death only local changes are produced, 

 and the fowl is protected against the action of a 

 virulent culture ; thus affording an example of so- 

 called mitigation of the virus. ^ The microbe is 

 aerobic, and its toxic effect is said to be due to the 

 abstraction of oxygen from the blood producing 

 asphyxia. J 



Micrococcus prodigiosus ( " Blood- rain" 

 "Bleeding host" Pilz der rothen Milch}. Cocci 

 slightly oval, -5 i p. in diam., forming at first 

 rose-red, and then blood- red zoogloea. They grow 

 luxuriantly when cultivated on sterilised potatoes 

 (Plate IX., Fig. i), and on the sloping surface 

 of nutrient agar-agar (Plate II., Fig. 3). They 

 appear occasionally on bread, boiled rice, and 

 starch-paste, and more rarely on boiled white of 

 egg and meat. Milk sometimes becomes coloured 

 blood-red by the growth of this fungus, an appear- 

 ance formerly attributed to a disease of the cow. 



* Cornil, Observ. hist, sur les lesions des muscles determinees 

 ar r injection du microbe du cholera des poules (^Archives de 

 Physiologic, 1882), and Cornil and Babes, Les Bacteries. 1885. 



t Pasteur, Sur le cholera des poules, Compt. Rend. 1880. 



J Cornil et Babes, Les Bacteries. 1885. 



