March 7, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



377 



which no classification, however liberal, 

 would place in the colon group. 



A QrapJiical Tabulation of the Morpholog- 

 ical, Cultural and Biochemical Charac- 

 ters of Certain Bacteria, together ivith 

 References to Authorities, Synonyms, 

 Literature, Etc.: Aethur I. Kendall, 

 S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, Boston, Mass. 

 Great diificulty is experienced by bac- 

 teriologists in establishing the identity of 

 a given bacterium whose morphological, 

 cultural and biochemical characters have 

 been worked out. This is due, as has al- 

 ready been shown, to the following facts: 

 (a) Inaccessibility of the literature, (h) 

 incompleteness of descriptions and indefi- 

 niteness of terms used, and (c) lack of 

 uniformity, in both the choice and composi- 

 tion of media. The object of this paper is 

 to collect in one set of tables the descrip- 

 tions of as many bacteria as possible, tabu- 

 lated after each individual characteristic, 

 has been verified by comparison with the 

 leading authorities, using (a) terms that 

 admit of one and only one interpretation, 

 and (&) terms that will exclude as far as 

 possible the personal factor. The graphical 

 method of tabulation first proposed by 

 Fischer (' Vorlesungen fiber Bakterien'), 

 and first used as a means of classification 

 by Fuller and Johnson (Journal of the 

 American Health Association, Vol. XXV., 

 p. 580 et seq.), has been adopted because 

 the definiteness of characteristics attained 

 with this method of representation cannot 

 be equalled by any other known method. 

 Tables were shown, including those micro- 

 cocci, which do not liquefy gelatin and do 

 not produce pigment— these being the first 

 of a set of tables and references in which 

 the author hopes to include the more com- 

 mon forms of bacteria. 



As a result, even a cursory glance at the 

 tables show the great similarity between 



certain bacteria that are supposed to be 

 different species. For example, nine spe- 

 cies of micrococci Avere referred to table 2. 

 These bacteria were isolated and described 

 by the same authority, were obtained from 

 different varieties of cheese, were supposed 

 to be separate species, and yet the charac- 

 teristics shown by this method are identi- 

 cal, and even the written descriptions point 

 strongly to the fact that these ' species ' 

 are, at best, only varieties of the same 

 form. 



Some Experiments ivith Synthesized Me- 

 dia: M. X. Sullivan, Brown University, 

 Providence, R. I. 



Pasteur, Cohn and others recognized that 

 some bacteria can secure their carbon, 

 hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen from sim- 

 ple compounds. This is to be expected 

 from the close relationship of the bacteria 

 to other plants. Recently the question of 

 simple synthesized media has received some 

 attention from Kuntz, Jordan and de 

 Schweinitz. Since Pasteur, however, little 

 use has been made of media other than 

 those made of meat infusion and peptone, 

 with agar or gelatin as a base. Meat in- 

 fusion and commercial peptone vary so 

 widely in their chemical composition and 

 in their nutrient value, that media com- 

 posed of these substances are practically 

 of no use in the study of pigment or anti- 

 toxin production or in the study of bacte- 

 rial metabolism. Analysis of standard 

 bouillon shows such small amounts of albu- 

 moses and peptones that it appears as if 

 we might neglect the meat infusion entire- 

 ly, or at least replace the peptone by a 

 non-nitrogenous, non-albumenous body. 



On medium (A) consisting of water 100 

 grams, Witte's peptone 5 gms., NaCl 3 

 gms., agar 1 gm., 17 different kinds of bac- 

 teria, including Microspora comma, B. 

 anthracis, B. typhosus and B. coli, grew 

 more slowly than on the standard media. 



