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Transactions of the Society. 



more continuous, less inflated, and one of the ends may be termi- 

 nated by a somewhat flattened, double-goose-head expansion, con- 

 taining well-marked granular matter, whicli stains very deeply, as 

 in (3). Out of a large number of examinations I could not find 

 in any of the specimens that these granules 

 were ejected, though in some cases the terminal 

 cells had been largely emptied of their 

 granular contents. 



The nearest approach to these figures I have 

 seen are in the drawings of Sir Joseph Lister's 

 paper on Bacterium lactis* The simple fila- 

 mentous form there figured I did not meet 

 with. I had the pleasure of handing Dr. Eoux, 

 one of M. Pasteur's able assistants, a photo- 

 negative of (2), as he had not seen a similar 

 example ; a little later he informed me that 

 M. Pasteur had seen a like form. The lactic 

 ferment was prepared by my friend Mr. W. S. 

 Squire, as he wished photo-micrographs of the 

 same with some other ferments, for lantern 

 exhibition in connection with his scientific 

 lecture " On the processes concerned in the 

 conversion of starch into alcohol," read before 

 the London Section of the Society of Chemical 

 Industry, June 9th, 1884.t It was alter leaving the sample 

 of lactic ferment in an undisturbed state for nearly a month, 

 in a test-tube closed with sterilized cotton, that I found these in- 

 flated chains near the surface of the fluid. One naturally asks, are 

 we to consider the enlarged cells as the result of a generative effort 

 by virtue of which the organism can be tided over such conditions 

 as, if continued, would otherwise lead to its destruction, or are we 

 to look upon them as a degenerative state, or a return to a primary 

 phase in its life-history ? My own opinion, as before stated, 

 inclines to the former view, partly from the close resemblance to 

 the generative forms in higher types, say for example (Edogonium 

 ciliatum of the Confervaceae. Whether the terminal enlarged in- 

 flated granular cells may be antheroidal cells, and the granules 

 immature androspores which ultimately set free antherozoids, and 

 the globular connected cells as in (2) sporange cells which when 

 fertilized by the former furnish oospores or a sporangium, or rest- 

 ing spore, must in our present knowledge be taken as conjectural, 

 and only to be decided by extended observations with the aid of the 

 cultivating stage. 



* Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., N.S., xiii. (1873) pp. 380-408 (3 pis.), 

 t Journ. Soc. Chemical Industry, July 29, 1884. 



