xiii, b, 4 Wade: Studies on Cryptoplasmic Infection 173 



or in part, became firmer, larger, and more glistening and that 

 separated, sometimes as if by fracture (fig. 31), into two or three 

 distinct masses or fragments. In stained smears these masses 

 usually showed well-defined outlines, with wide variation in color. 

 The more advanced were oval or rounded and deeply stained. 

 They were more or less differentiated from those nuclei, or parts 

 of nuclei, that were not so intensified (figs. 29 to 38) and that 

 sooner or later degenerated. Certain cultures in which bacte- 

 ria did not multiply seemed unfavorable for this nuclear change, 

 though it was apparently attempted (figs. 41, 42, and 43). 



BASIC FORMS 



These bodies are round, oval, or lenticular, sharply outlined, 

 solid, intensely stained by Loeffler's blue and deeply stained by 

 Giemsa's, without any determinable structural differentiation, 

 and range in size from 2 to 4 or 4.5 or from 3.5 or 4 to 5 or 6 

 microns in different cultures (figs. 39 and 45) . Because of their 

 essential resemblance to the bodies to which I applied the term 

 "basic form," 5 they will be spoken of by that name. They were 

 found only in cultures of tissue fragments on the fruit media 

 and were never numerous. Bacterial growth seemed to facilitate 

 their development, if not to be essential. 



Their appearance in fresh preparations and stained smears 

 indicate that they develop from the more deeply staining of the 

 nuclear elements just described. They are often by no means 

 sharply differentiated, for in a single preparation the gradation 

 from pale degenerate cell fragments to intensely stained basic 

 forms is not abrupt, though the range is usually wide. 



The ultimate end of the basic forms is not evident from their 

 appearance. Though in certain instances there was a strong 

 suggestion of multiplication by fission, this cannot be asserted 

 to have occurred. It is certain that their production was neither 

 active nor sustained, and they more or less slowly disappeared. 



CRYPTOCOCCUS 



In one culture from each of cases I and II, there were found, 

 after seven months and one and a half months, respectively, 

 definitely differentiated fungous organisms, unicellular, of some- 

 what yeastlike morphology. These elements were small, usually 

 measuring between 1.3 by 1.6 and 2.0 by 2.5, rarely 3.0, microns. 

 They were sharply outlined, never doubly contoured, but often 

 surrounded by an unstained halo, probably due to shrinkage 



'This Journal, Sec. B (1916), 11, 267. 



