588 Transactions of the Society. 



swimming along with a lazy sort of progression. Detaching now 

 a half-developed egg, and exercising great care to eliminate every 

 possible source of accidental contamination, I placed the egg with 

 a trace of water upon a glass slip and crushed it out flat with a 

 thin cover, and in a few minutes I had counted no less than nine 

 bacilli. The right ovary was nearly free from disease. During 

 a prolonged search I traced three bacilli only, which may not im- 

 possibly have floated on to it during the dissection. Many other 

 subjects I have since had the opportunity of dissecting, some of 

 whose ovaries contained bacilli in countless profusion. In one re- 

 markable case the receptaculum seminis contained no spermatozoa, 

 although the queen was young and had mated since she had 

 produced worker bees, but was filled with a dirty fluid through which 

 were scattered innumerable minute and irregular granules, amongst 

 which swam large numbers of bacilli. Here then was a distinct 

 point of incidence for an attack, which left the ovaries still in 

 perfect health. A question of some difficulty here to my mind 

 presents itself. The disease seems always acute in the case of the 

 larvae, embracing all parts of their organization. This may possibly 

 result from the thinness of their membranes, the freedom of their 

 viscera, the frequency of invagination, and the rapidity of interstitial 

 changes in their case. In the imago, on the contrary, the disease 

 assumes a chronic condition, and confined to a portion of the frame 

 at least temporarily, may be several weeks, and possibly in queens 

 even months, in running its course. 



The name foul brood, given in ignorance of the nature and 

 scope of the malady, is manifestly utterly inappropriate. To say 

 that a queen is sufiering from foul brood would be as illogical and 

 ridiculous as talking of toothache in the liver. I therefore have 

 proposed the name Bacillus alvei, which has been at once accepted 

 and adopted amongst intelligent apiarians both in England and 

 America. 



The necessity of a specific name has recently become more 

 apparent, since during these investigations I have found that bees 

 are not only liable to suffer from attacks of the organism now 

 engaging our attention, but from many others producing certain 

 characteristic symptoms, and of which I hope to speak in particular 

 in a future communication. The old notion that the adult bee 

 had perfect immunity from diseases, and which no doubt was based 

 upon the constancy of its external appearance as the outcome of an 

 external skeleton, turns out to be the opposite of the truth, and the 

 Microscope has supplied me at once with the means of explaining 

 observed singularities in special stocks by revealing in each case 

 disease organisms of some destructive type. These industrious 

 creatures live in numerous colonies, of which the members are 

 always in the closest contact ; their usual system of communication 



