PART I.] Experiments Made with an Ordinary Healthy Stool. 13 



quite vertical. It seemed analogous to the spinning of a plate or ball nicely pivoted 

 on a juggler's stick, which may be seen to revolve in every direction but the vertical, 

 the analogy being complete, except that the organic connection between the sporangium 

 and the stalk rendered reverse turns necessary. On touching this with water, the 

 capsule appeared to become instantaneously dissolved, no trace being left: the spores had 

 fallen down, and the filament looked perfectly bare. Some parts of the mycelium 

 were dilated into saccules (or macroconidia) (Fig. xix, 6), but no evidence of spore 

 contents was distinguishable. 



Illustration IV. : — 



Being desirous of ascertaining whether from the rice-water stools in epidemic 

 cholera I could produce capsules more unmistakably like those figured by Professor 

 Hallier than I had succeeded in doing from discharges obtained in an endemic locality, 

 such as Calcutta is, a sample was brought from I^ucknow, carefully secured in a clean 

 vial, which was obtained during my visit to the North- Western Provinces during the 

 epidemic of cholera which .occurred there in September 1869. A drachm of the 

 sediment was poured into a perfectly clean watch-glass, and placed on the stage 

 in the isolating apparatus in the manner described in the last illustration. In the 

 course of a week a film was seen to have formed, which continued to increase in 

 density for another week, but no trace of any mould could be observed in it through 

 the bell-glass. At the end of three weeks the preparation was taken out and micro- 

 scopically examined, but no cysts had formed, as in the former preparation treated in 

 exactly the same way, but there was a great quantity of mycelium, in the meshes of 

 which numerous circular bodies were embedded (Plate VII, Fig. xx) ; the latter seemed 

 to be the result of segmentation of the former, judging from the sirnilarity between 

 the free cells, and the imperfectly detached segments of mycelium. The watch-glass 

 was replaced in the apparatus for a fortnight, but no change took place. 



From these illustrations it will be seen that whereas cysts, distinctly resembling 

 those described by Professor Hallier, may, by cultivation, be observed to develop in 

 choleraic discharges, yet they are by no means constantly obtainable, for out of 

 more than a hundred cultivations, made with the express object of developing these 

 cysts, only three times was I able to produce any fungi bearing such tokens of 

 fructification. 



Is it possible to develop fungi in other than cholera dejections bearing fruit 

 resembling the " cholera cyst " ? The answer must be " Yes," as the following 

 experiment will show from cultivations of ordinary healthy stool, one isolated and 

 the other exposed. 



Illustration V. : — 



About half an ounce of faeces, obtained from a perfectly healthy person, was 

 placed on a small glass plate, and carefully transferred into the bell-glass of the 



