REPRODUCTION 1 1 



shaking, boring or serpentine action. The location of the flagella 

 has some influence upon their behavior. Flagella may be broken 

 off from the cell body by agitation. They are then clumped by 

 agglutinating sera. 



Flagella may have other functions than locomotion. It is possible 

 that they may serve as organs for the absorption of nourishment 

 from the surrounding media. The presence of very long or very 

 numerous flagella does not necessarily presage very active motion. 

 At times, under certain conditions, an organism ordinarily motile 

 and flagellated will appear immobile and non-flagellated (Lehmann 

 and Zierler), but this is rare. Certain flagella have in their contin- 

 uity little round granules, or bodies, which apparently have nothing 

 to do with the functions of locomotion, but may have something 

 to do with the nutrition of the cell. The test of motility of a 

 bacterium is to see it progress by itself completely across the field 

 of the microscope. 



REPRODUCTION. The process of direct cell division is the 

 commonest way by which bacteria multiply. Hence the name of 

 fission fungi. The ways of reproduction of the bacteria high in the 

 scale are by direct division, branching, and by means of spores, 

 by other granules called gonidia.J The spores appearing in the 

 lower bacteria, bacilli for example, are not reproduction forms but 

 states of high resistance. 



The process of cell division or binary division is very simple, and 

 may be a matter of twenty minutes, or as long as six hours. Divi- 

 sion is almost always across the cell in the direction of the short axis , 

 though it may in some bacteria be in a direction parallel to the long 

 axis, but this is uncommon. 



By means of the hanging drop or the block culture method, on 

 an inverted cover -glass, the process may be observed easily. The 

 phenomena of division begin by an elongation of the cell, soon fol- 

 lowed by a constriction or pinching in of the cell on both sides, at an 

 equatorial point. The process begins to be apparent in the cell 

 wall and extends inward, 



