396 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE [chap. 



bacillus of malignant oedema possesses numerous flagella 

 fastened along its cylindrical body, our bacillus possesses 

 flagella only near the rounded ends ; the short rods possess, 

 as a rule, flagella at both ends, one, two, or three at one, a 

 bundle of three to eight at the other end, and the flagella 

 are always attached at one point laterally to the rounded 

 end ; the cylindrical bacilli have one to three flagella at one 

 end. Some of the flagella are very long — six to ten times 

 the length of the bacillus — and spiral, others are shorter and 

 wavy. In a preparation in which the flagella are success- 

 fully stained (by Van Ermengem's modification of LofBer's 

 method), besides those that are still attached to the bacillus 

 there are numerous flagella — single or in bundles, wavy or 

 spiral — which are free, that is, had become detached during 

 the process of preparation. It is certainly very surprising to 

 find in such specimens what a large number of bacilli do. 

 possess numbers of long spiral flagella, and to compare with 

 this the extremely feeble motility shown by the few in the 

 fresh state ; from a flagella-stained specimen one would 

 conclude that the majority of the bacilli are possessed of 

 brisk motility, such a conclusion is, however, very con- 

 spicuously contradicted by actual observation. 



A further difference between our bacillus and that of 

 malignant oedema is the distribution and morphology of the 

 bacilli in the infected animal : while in animals that suc- 

 cumb after infection with the malignant cedema bacillus 

 numerous bacilli are present in the spleen, many of them 

 as the characteristic threads, in our case the spleen contains 

 the bacilli very sparingly, and then only as short rods, and 

 considerable masses of spleen tissue have to be used for ob- 

 taining successful cultures ; the same applies to the blood of 

 the circulation. But in the size and the position of the 

 spores in the bacilli our bacillus closely resembles the 



