82 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



fungus ; it will not develope in linseed oil, colza oil, or water, and 

 is killed if transferred from olive oil to any of these liquids. If tte 

 mycelium is removed from the plants before being transferred to the 

 oil, its development is very slow, and fructification is not obtained; 

 this is probably due to the want of the water which the plant 

 contained. The systematic position of the form could not be 

 determined. 



He also finds as the result of subsequent investigations* that a number 

 of mycelia flourish in a variety of oils, as those of olive, poppy, linseed, 

 and colza, and in castor-oil. Most of these are still undetermined, 

 and one appears to be a species of Verticillium. Among those which 

 appeared in olive-oil is a new Saccharomi/ces, to which he gives the 

 name S. olei. It consists of oval cells arranged in branched threads, 

 which occasionally become broken up, and the isolated cells then bud 

 and form new threads. The average size of the cells is 4*0 /x by 

 2'5 jx; their contents of a pale or, in refracted light, of a slight rose 

 colour. No disengagement of gas, or special odour, accompanies their 

 growth. At length they form a farinaceous deposit at the bottom of 

 the water. The nature of the oil is completely changed in the 

 process, becoming white and milky in the course of about eight days. 

 Neither S. cerevisice nor any other allied species will grow in 

 olive-oil. 



A moneron grown in the same way in castor-oil developed through 

 the whole substance of the oil, rendering it opaline ; it does not, 

 however, change its nature or saponify. 



If into any oil that has not been purified any body is introduced 

 which has been soaked in water, the surface of the body is seen, after 

 a few days, to be covered with an abundant vegetation, composed of 

 the mycelia of a number of fungi, among which have been detected 

 Mucor sjnnosus and pleurocystis, and species of Verticillium, Chceto- 

 mium, and Sterigmatocystis, but most abundantly of all, Penicillium 

 glaucum, which fructifies profusely, not only on the surface, as is the 

 case with aqueous solutions, but throughout the oil. Other Asco- 

 mycetes produce not only their couidia, but also their perithecia in 

 these conditions. These fungi are produced in a great variety of un- 

 purified oils, but not in an oil which has been purified by sulphuric 

 acid like colza-oil, or which has been strongly heated, like linseed- 

 oil. If the moist substance is placed for a time in boiling water 

 before its immersion in the oil, it still becomes covered after a time 

 with the fungoid growth, showing that the spores are in the oil and 

 not in the moist substance ; the reason for their not developing in the 

 oil, if left to itself, being that water is necessary for their growth. 

 The plant obtains its necessary oxygen and nitrogen from the air dis- 

 solved in the oil ; the oil itself furnishing direct to the plant the 

 cai-bon and the hydrogen. A sufficient quantity of nitrogenous and 

 mineral substances is always contained in unpurified oil. The oil 

 remains perfectly limpid, and apparently does not undergo any change 

 in composition, except a crystallization of fatty acids, indicating a slow 

 saponification. 



* Bull. Soc. Bot. France, xxviii. (1881) pp. 70-1, 137-42. 



I 



