PRINCIPLES OF VETERINARY SURGERY 125 



microbian flora of several botryomycostic lesions, says that 

 the disease known as botryomycosis of the horse is "a 

 wound infection, and that several species of micro-organisms 

 are capable of producing it." The more recent experiments 

 of De Jong, Kitt and Rabe seem, however, to entirely dis- 

 prove the exactness of this deduction. Rabe has shown that 

 the botryococcus found in lesions of horses will, by inocula- 

 tion, produce analogous lesions in other horses. He suc- 

 ceeded in reproducing botryomycostic growths in the horse, 

 but found that the same agent caused entirely different 

 lesions, — necrotic inflammations, — in other species, which 

 fact confirms the conclusions made from our own clinical ob- 

 servations as to the receptivity of the horse to this special 

 bacterium. De Jong found that botryococci and staphylo- 

 cocci could not be made to show any analogous cultural man- 

 ifestations, and that when the former were infected into the 

 subcutem.of the horse it always produced a mycofibroma 

 while the latter only caused its characteristic phenomenon, — 

 abscess. 



Description. — Coccus. Non-motile. Non-flagellated. 

 Chromogenic. Aerobic. Size, i /*. Arranged in groups 

 somewhat smaller than the staphylococcus. 



Cultivation. — Gelatinized peptone, glycerinated gelose, 

 gelatin agar-agar and potato are the most suitable media 

 for its cultivation. 



Isolation. — The botryococcus may be isolated by its 

 rather characteristic behavior on agar. (Its colonies 

 promptly produce an orange pigment, which, unlike the 

 staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, when inoculated into fresh 

 media and heated to body heat, becomes white in twenty- 

 four hours, and then orange-yellow if the temperature is 

 lowered to 60° Fahr.) It is also differentiated from the 

 aureus by the variable colors it produces. The chromogenic 

 function of the aureus is quite uniform. 



