B84 MES. 1. J. VELET — CONTEIBUTIOK TO THE 



teased up with sterilized needles and " planted," one in each flask, 

 and both were placed in the dark at room-temperature. Both 

 flasks gave abundant growths, of course of a mixed character. 

 From these fresh cultures were made in the same medium, 

 selecting as far as possible those large rods which were 

 identifiable as characteristic of JPelomyxa ; and this process of 

 selection and re-selection was repeated constantly until an 

 approximately pure culture was obtained (PI. 36. fig. 3.) 



From this nearly pure culture two more flasks were inoculated 

 and gave growths of rods resembling those of Felomyxa, and 

 stainable in the same manner ; also a hanging-drop of egg- 

 albumin, containing a few refringent bodies, was inoculated from 

 the pure culture and gave results exactly similar to that 

 inoculated with rods from the fresh preparation above described 

 {V\. 36. figs. 11-13). 



Prom a comparison of these figures it will be admissible to 

 consider the growths as identical. In the drop the rods had fixed 

 on the refringent bodies ; in the flasks they fixed both on 

 refringent bodies and on the walls of the flask, and, growing very 

 slowly, attained a considerable length, but in neither culture did 

 they show at this time any sign of branching. After a growth 

 of a fortnight, they exactly resembled those unbranched filaments 

 first discovered in Velomyxa growing on the refringent bodies. 



At this time I was obliged to be away from home for six weeks, 

 leaving a pair of flasks with cultures two weeks old in the 

 condition described. When I returned, I found that the filaments 

 in these cultures had branched, and that the branching was of the 

 pseudo-dichotomous kind previously observed in the fresh 

 preparations, viz., either the kind of apposition commonly known 

 as peculiar to the genus Cladothrix, or that early stage of it, a 

 dichotomous branching of the slieath only, which has been figured 

 by Pischer for Gladothrix (PI. 37. figs. 14-16.) 



Prom the nature of the medium in which the filaments were 

 grown, it was almost impossible to make a satisfactory permanent 

 preparation of them. But it seemed so desirable to preserve 

 some evidence of the branching that my friend Dr. Gustav Mann, 

 who was consulted with regard to this, kindly attempted to make 

 a preparation for me of the bacteria from the serum by a special 

 method of precipitating them. 



His ingenuity produced a fairly successful preparation, 

 sufficient to show the poiut in question, although the method 



