18 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
it was first placed in the bath. It acted much in the same man- 
ner as did the goldfish, except that from its size and strength it 
produced a much greater commotion in the water. It was left 
in the bath about ten minutes and then replaced in the tank from 
whence it had been taken. The next morning the entire surface 
of the body looked as if a card had passed over it and had raked 
the fungus out into long filaments and strings and streamers 
ready to be pulled off with scarcely an effort. Two days after a 
second bath was administered, but while still more of the fungus 
was loosened, the parasite had evidently been too long at work, 
the hyphe had penetrated too deeply and drawn‘for too long a 
time upon the tissues of the flesh for it to recover, and in two days 
more it ceased to move. 
The next animals to be experimented with were nine speci- 
mens of the mud puppy, or iVecturus lateralis. These had all 
been more or less injured about the mouth with the hook in 
their capture, and two or three had their tails badly mutilated. 
Some of them were very much matted with the fungus when 
they arrived, while others were only slightly attacked. They 
were all placed in the bath and the fungus was loosened or 
killed upon all of them, but the salt water had the effect, in the 
cases of those severely injured, of aggravating the injury, and 
by increasing the rawness of the wounds, prepared the field for- 
a new crop of the fungus, since the water was full of the sapro- 
leguia_ spores, ready, and indeed anxious to continue the old 
condition of affairs whenever opportunity offered. In such 
cases the new crop of fungus sprang up with a rankness and a 
velocity which was truly surprising, and if [ had not known 
that the salt water would kill the fungus, | should have been 
inclined to think that in these cases salt water acted as a fertil- 
izer for the hyphe. I am inclined however to think that 
the true condition of affairs was that the salt water killed 
a part of the hyphz, and at the same time rendered the 
wounded surfaces much more suitable localities than ever 
they were before, for the growth of the fungus, and then 
when the animals were replaced in the fresh water, the spores, 
which were there in countless numbers, finding suitable territory 
in which to develop, took root, and, together with the rem- 
