Further Experiments, dr. Bij Dr. B. L. Maddox. 949 



warty-looking growth, with no appearance of the track of the wire 

 beneath, and the gelatin only slightly softened. This contained 

 rather large crooked rods in all degrees of curvature, from the 

 straight rod to a complete ring, but not a single genuine Spirillum 

 was detected, all were motionless, part of the specimen on the slide 

 was crowded with minute micrococci, mingled with larger and 

 brighter corpuscles, some apparently in the first stage of germina- 

 tion. This appearance led me to examine carefully an inoculation 

 into a meat infusion that had been made from the same agar-agar 

 culture on the 29th August, and which had been kept at the 

 temperature of the room. It was turbid, had & faint stale odour, 

 and abounded with similar organisms near the upper surface ; lower 

 down the organisms were smaller, stiU larger than the ordinary 

 curved bacillus, no spores were visible. Whether this was a large 

 variety of the comma bacillus or a contamination, I am uncertain, 

 as in this case it appeared to have been derived from the agar-agar 

 culture, which had been used to feed the fly and make the inocula- 

 tion ; later on this was transmitted through the fly retaining the 

 same characters. The tube inoculated from the thirty-one dejections 

 was soon turbid and broken down, abounding chiefly in micrococci, 

 a few thin, non-motile, long rods, scarcely a short stout rod to be 

 found, and no curved bacilli, which may perhaps be due to the dry- 

 ness of the dejections. The excreta of the 3rd and 4th afforded a 

 fair number of the commas. On the 5th and 6th the fly was fed 

 from the uwA meat culture with the large crooked rods, and on the 

 7th the excreta, twenty-two in number, which contained some of 

 the crooked rods, were inoculated, after being mingled with a 

 droplet of freshly boiled distilled water, into a neutral sterilized 

 meat infusion, and kept at the temperature of the room. In three 

 days this was turbid and furnished an abundance of bacilli from 

 straight to all stages of curvature, some of the free ones had motion, 

 others in a zoogloea-mass appeared to be in a resting stage ; there 

 were also straight rods of two or three joints and a few short, stout 

 rods with blunt ends, each motile, and scarcely any micrococci. In 

 fluid media warmth appeared to greatly encourage the growth of 

 the latter. 



As the fly was seen to be very weak in crawling up the sides 

 of the tumbler, and it seemed doubtful if I should keep it alive 

 much longer upon the same food, the experiments were stopped, 

 and the fly was fed from meat, meat infusion on sugar, fruit-jelly, 

 &e., and quickly regained strength enough to continually crawl to 

 the top of the tumbler. It was allowed its liberty on the 29th, 

 having been in captivity forty days. 



The results of these and the previous investigations point, I 

 think, to the conclusion, that the comma bacillus from cultures can 

 pass through the digestive tube of some insects in a living state, 



Sf-r. 2.— Vol. V. 3 Q 



