1897J MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. BO 



sired to prepare some sorbose directly, they could not get 

 any. Byschl and Delffs could obtain it neither from the 

 fresh nor the fermented juice. In short, the fantastic sor- 

 bose, born by chance in a laboratory retort, refused abso- 

 lutely to make its appearance ag^ain. We know now why 

 this was; the mystery has been broug-ht to lij^ht by a 

 chemist at the Museum — M. Bertrand. By crushing- ripe 

 service-berries and then exposing- them to the open air M. 

 Bertrand obtained first alcohol by ordinary fermentation, 

 and soon a whitish layer covered the surface of the liquid ; 

 the alcohol disappeared in its turn, the layer g-rew mouldy, 

 but in the remaining- liquid it was proved that there was 

 no trace of sorbose. He tried ag-ain and ag-ain, and one 

 fine day on the layer of which we have spoken a fly alighted, 

 a little red vinegar fly. Then all was changed. The mem- 

 brane thickened, soon swarmed with larvce, and in the 

 liquid below it g-reat quantities of sorbose appeared. This 

 is what had taken place: the membrane was made thick 

 and lieavy by the thousands of microbes that had been 

 broug-ht by the little red fly, microbes whose oxidising- in- 

 flence had rapidly transformed the juice of the service- 

 berries into sorbose. The experiment, after that, could 

 be repeated at will. Thus recognised at leng-fh, the indus- 

 trious microbes, whose leng-th is less than a thousandth of 

 a milli-metre (.025 of an inch) require no urging- to manu- 

 facture in a few hours nearly a kilog-ram (21b.) of the new 

 kind of g-lucose. — Cosmos. 



The experiments made with nitrog-en in this country do 

 not seem to be conclusive (see p. 561, Aug-. 7 last). An 

 important paper on the subject has appeared in a German 

 bacteriolog^ical journal, giving experiments showing- the 

 capability possessed by Bacillus radiciola of growing- on for- 

 eig-n culture media. It will be remembered that Dr. Nobbe 

 isolated some twenty of these nitrogen-assimilating bac- 

 teria from the root nodules of various leg-uminous plants, 

 and has endowed them wdth the collective title of "Nitra- 

 gin." In the present experiments bacteria from the luc- 

 erne nodules were cultivated in pure media derived res- 



