- 1 i- The Minute Structure of the Vinegar Plant. 



ficiently careful. I do not think all the little bodies are beaded, 

 but conceive that they tend to become so, and I think the 

 amount of division and distinction of one bead from another 

 varies according to the stage of growth. The size of these 

 bacterium bodies varies; thus, after examining portions of a 

 large adult plant, I find entered in my note-book that large 

 ones on that occasion were 1-8000" long, and small not half as 

 much. On the same occasion it was with extreme difficulty I 

 could make out a beaded structure in any of the bodies, while 

 on others I saw it, as I find entered, in " scores." 



Occasionally I saw bacterium bodies not distinguishable 

 from those in the gelatinous mass, swimming close to the edge 

 of the portion under examination ; but I could not be certain 

 whether they had been set free by the tearing and stretching, 

 or whether they had never been embedded in the mass. I 

 think, however, the former was the case. 



After two or three fragments of a large plant had been un- 

 disturbed about a week in a Preston salts bottle containing 

 water with a little sugar in solution, I found a thin, delicate 

 new plant about one inch in diameter floating at the 

 top. This, on being viewed with a power of 150, exhibited the 

 appearance of the accompanying sketch, the dark' threads con- 

 sisting of strings of beads, apparently spores. Whether old or 

 young, a quantity of larger cells will be found embedded in the 

 gelatinous mass. Some of them (drawn from the young plant) 

 are shown in the sketch, and will be found to contain smaller 

 cells. These little cells (gonidia ?) were sometimes isolated, 

 sometimes approximated ; and on one occasion I thought one of 

 the larger cells contained two bacterium bodies, each composed 

 of three or four beads. The position of the object was, how- 

 ever, unfavourable for determining this with certainty. 



Mitsherlich's observations on yeast may throw light upon 

 these cells containing spores or gonidia. He tells us that the 

 imterhefe, or sediment yeast of the Bavarian beer, is propa- 

 gated by spores thrown out from the larger cells, and not by 

 buds or offshoots, as is the case with surface yeast.* I do not 

 mean to assert that the large cells in the vinegar plant are yeast 

 cells, although I think it probable; but, if not, they may be 

 cells of the same plant in a different condition, and therefore 

 requiring a separate name, although several conditions and 

 .era! names may, after all, have to be grouped together as 

 Bub-names of a Bingle species of plant. 



The larger cells not only vary in shape and contents, but 

 also in position ; some are isolated, others collected in small 

 ■ .nations, wliile in other spots hundreds are approximated in 

 a more or less regular pattern. 



* Millet's Cliiii.islri/, vol. iii., p. 105. 



