SECTION VII. 



THE FORMATION OF MUCUS, AND ALLIED 

 PHENOMENA OF DECOMPOSITION. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF BACTEKIA IN THE 

 MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR. 



159. The Zooglcea of Leueonostoc Mesenterioides. 



IN the manufacture of saccharose there are occasionally formed 

 certain masses of gelatinous mucus, for the most part merely small 

 colourless or reddish agglomerations, resembling frog spawn in 

 appearance, but, under special conditions, increasing to masses 

 exceeding a cubic foot in dimensions. Attention was first drawn 

 to them by C. SCHEIBLER (I.), who, in 1874, subjected them to 

 chemical examination, the result of which indicated the presence 

 of dextran, a carbohydrate first discovered by him in the plasma 

 of unripe sugar-beet. Scheibler, in fact, regarded this mucus as 

 expressed beet plasma; but this opinion (which was also shared 

 by E. FELTZ (I.)) was verv soon opposed, P. JUBERT (I.) having 

 shown, a few months later, that these gelatinous lumps (known 

 in France as " gomme de sucrerie ") continue to develop in sugar 

 solutions. From this he concluded that they are not extra vasated 

 beet plasma, but a ferment (a "plant," as he expressly stated), 

 whose reproductive power he succeeded in arresting by means of 

 carbolic acid. The microscopical examination of the mass, how- 

 ever, as first made by F. MENDES and J. BORSCHTSCHOFF (I.), led 

 at the outset to no satisfactory elucidation. For an accurate 

 knowledge of the true state of the case we are indebted to 

 L. CIENKOWSKI (I.), who, in 1878, proved that the mucous masses 

 in question are composed of bacteria with extraordinarily swollen 

 and gelatinised cell-walls, which cause the individual organisms to 

 adhere together and form the aforesaid large masses, whose super- 

 ficial convolutions frequently resemble those of the mesentery. 

 Influenced by Billroth's publication on Coccobacteria septica, and 

 in view of the name Ascococcus Billrotliii given by COHN (II.) to 

 a, mucus-forming fission fungus, Cienkowski called his microbe 

 Ascococcus mesenterioides. The forms of cell which he detected in 



