68 THE EVOLUTION OF CONTINUITY 



Sometimes there are all the appearances of filamentous 

 branching (Pig. 15). 



In the figure below, the long bacillus with which the 

 lowest branch commences is to be noted, and the suggestion 

 it offers of the multiplication of filamentous into coeno- 

 cytic continuity. The long bacillus might be really several 

 bacillary protoplasts within one envelope. It is such long 

 forms, chiefly observed in old cultures, which seem to link 

 up the " lower " with the " higher " bacteria. They are 

 usually termed " involution forms " and regarded as degener- 



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Fio. 15. — Bacillary growth from the urine of a case of bacilluria 

 due to bacillus coli, and where under treatment the infection 

 was disappearing. (Greatly magnified.) 



ative in nature, but under the term are included many 

 peculiar bacterial shapes of distinctly different kinds, and 

 probably of different significance, and it is questionable if 

 degeneration is reflected in most cases. Thus the " involution 

 form " of the plague bacillus is an oval, swollen, pale structure, 

 very different from that of the typhoid bacillus, which is 

 like a short thin mould hypha. There seems a probability 

 that the latter form reflects not degeneration, but the 

 imposition of Continuity, and that, far from being one 

 overgrown bacillus, it is equivalent to a series of bacillary 

 protoplasts enclosed in one envelope, and not separated from 

 each other by transverse partitions. The reverse phenomenon 

 would be that exhibited by Mucor mucedo (page 62) when 



