Report on the Bacteriology of Water. 275 



Saccardo* gives under B. Praussnitzii, a synonym B. ramosus 

 liquefaciens of Fliigge ; whether this is the same I cannot determine 

 from the very short and vague description. 



Macef gives B. radicosus as the " wurzel-bacillus," but his descrip- 

 tion is too vague to enable me to determine whether it is the B. 

 ramosus of Eisenberg ; he does not intend it for Flugge's B. mycoides, 

 however, since he describes that separately. Zimmermann also gives 

 it as B. radicosus and TatarofE as B. radiciformis.% 



The Pranklands, who found the same, or a very similar, form 

 common in the Thames and Lea, regard their species as the B. ramosus 

 of Eiseuberg and Fraenkel, and as the " wurzel-bacillus," and Lustig|| 

 gives the descriptions separately, but remarks on their probable 

 identity. 



I have little doubt that the species I have isolated from the 

 Thames is Eisenberg's and Lustig's B. ramosus; that it is the 

 " wurzel-bacillus " of Fraenkel and Eisenberg ; and that it is identical 

 with that found by the Franklands, though the figures given by the 

 latter are not clear enough to identify it by. 



In the size of the rodlets and filaments, mycelium-like plate- 

 colonies, root-like stab-cultures, behaviour on agar and potatoes, 

 characters of the spores, and, indeed, in almost every detail of which 

 I can get information, my Thames form agrees with Fraenkel's 

 B. ramosus, the "'wurzel-bacillus" of the Germans. What the forms 

 described by Mace, Crookshank, Saccardo, and Fliigge may be is not 

 clear, and probably some confusion exists here. 



It seems pertinent to remark here that many bacteriologists are not 

 sufficiently careful in all cases to look up the synonyms of the forms 

 they describe, though this precaution is really more necessary in the 

 deplorable state of their literature than probably in any other 

 department of biology. 



Germination of tSpores. 



As the mass cultures prove, the spores germinate readily at all 

 ordinary temperatures, whence was to be inferred that no extra- 

 ordinary difficulty ought to be incurred in observing the process, pro- 

 vided I could succeed in isolating a single spore under a sufficiently 

 high power in a hanging drop, and such turned out to be the case. 



The methods and apparatus employed were similar to those I had 



* Loc. tit., p. 989 (No. 202). 

 f Loc. tit., p. 610. 



J Zimmermann, ' Die Bait, unserer Trink-und Nutz-wasser,' p. 30. Tataroff, 

 Dorpat, 1891. 



Loc. cit., p. 388. 

 || Loc. tit., pp. 96, 97. 



