114 Elements of Water Bacteriology. 



and intestines of 67 fish caught in the polluted Illinois 

 and Mississippi Rivers, isolated B. coli 47 times. He, 

 concluded from these results that the migration of fish 

 from a contaminated stream or lake to an unpolluted one 

 may explain the occasional finding of B. coli in small 

 samples, or the more regular detection of it in large 

 volumes of the water. 



Many bacteriologists have gone further and affirmed 

 that the colon bacillus was not a form characteristic of 

 the intestine at all, but a saprophyte having a wide distri- 

 bution in nature. The first of this school, perhaps, 

 was Kruse (Kruse, 1894), who in 1894 protested against 

 the arbitrary conclusions drawn from the colon test as 

 then applied. He pointed out that the characters usually 

 observed marked not a single species but a large group 

 of organisms. As ordinarily defined, he added, "the 

 Bacterium coli is in no way characteristic of the feces of 

 men or animals. Such bacteria occur everywhere, in 

 air, in earth, and in the water, from the most different 

 sources." Even if the relations to milk and sugar media 

 be considered, " micro-organisms with these characteristics 

 are also widespread." Dr. Kruse gave no experimental 

 data on which his opinion was based. In the same year 

 Beckmann (Beckmann, 1894) isolated a bacilhis which 

 he identified by pretty thorough tests as B. coli from the 

 city water of Strassburg, a ground-water which he believed 

 could by no possibility be subject to fecal contamination. 

 Large quantities of water were used for the isolation. 



