AND OTHER FERMENTATIVE CHANGES 285 
justly received with the gravest suspicion. But with the means now at our 
disposal the grand source of error in former similar inquiries might be eliminated, 
and results of a more satisfactory character might therefore be anticipated. 
I was thus led to prosecute the investigation far beyond what I had at first 
intended, and will now proceed to give a selection from the results. 
That which I will mention first has reference to the origin both of torulae 
and of bacteria. 
On the evening of the 13th of December, 1871, during a drizzling rain which 
had been falling all afternoon, I took a ‘heated’ wine-glass with its cover out into 
the street, and, raising the cover, allowed a few drops of rain to fall into the 
glass, and having covered it again and brought it back into the house, I charged 
it with unboiled urine from a ‘heated’ flask, the arrangements for obtaining 
the liquid being the same that have been before described. In the course of two 
days I noticed a tiny opaque streak proceeding vertically downwards from 
a point on the inside of the glass; and on the following day the streak had 
increased, and the cloud of mucus was speckled with numerous white points. 
On the fourth day, while the speckling of the cloud had increased, and the 
streak had become coarsely granular, two little plants of filamentous fungi were 
also seen floating in the clear liquid. By the fifth day the specks in the mucous 
deposit had assumed the appearance of coarse grains of white sand, and similar 
granules were sprinkled over the lower part of the inside of the glass. I removed 
one of these granules with ‘heated’ pipette, and examined it microscopically. 
It proved to be a very beautiful torula, composed of pullulating oval cells of 
great delicacy, disposed in groups, of which one is represented in Plate VI, 
Fig. 6a. Though not very different in size from the yeast plant, it proved 
itself to be a totally distinct species, not only by the more delicate and less 
granular character of the cells, but by the fact that it grew thus luxuriantly in 
non-saccharine urine, in which the Torula Cerevisiae will only grow with extreme 
difficulty. For the sake of distinction I may term it Torula Ovalis, on account 
of the oval form of its cells. When ten days had elapsed after the mingling 
of the rain water with the urine, the white granular deposit had greatly increased, 
and some scum was also present on the surface, which the microscope showed 
to consist of the same oval torula. But the two plants of filamentous fungi had 
subsided and had apparently ceased to grow; the liquid, though still brilliantly 
clear and but very slightly affected in odour, having doubtless become unfit 
for their development through chemical changes induced by the torula. Another 
small fungus plant, observed several days before upon the side of the glass 
below the level of the lhquid, seemed, however, to be still increasing. At this 
time having occasion to go into England for a few days, and being desirous 
