
OF PUTREFACTION AND OTHER FERMENTATIVE CHANGES. 319 
more than could have been expected, as it was covered merely with a plate of 
glass, there being no room for it under the glass shade. But at the end of 
that time the urine became turbid, and I found under the microscope multi- 
tudes of granules, of which samples are represented at a in Plate XXII. fig. 5, 
resembling what I have described as occurring in the goblet. Plate X XII. fig. 
5 6 represents another specimen of similar bodies which occurred in a glass of 
unboiled urine about the same period. I have introduced this sketch because 
it shows the peculiar irregular groups formed when several are together, as well 
as the variety of size of the individual granules. 
That these granules were really organisms I had once an unexpected oppor- 
tunity of proving. On the 5th February of the same year, I was examining 
some of them which had grown in a glass of unboiled urine, diluted with twice 
its bulk of distilled water which had been boiled and allowed to cool, and as I 
proceeded to sketch the group represented at c, in Plate X XIL. fig. 5, I saw that 
it grew under my eyes. When I began the sketch, the lower three members of 
the group were a pair. About ten minutes later, at 9.4 a.m., the three had 
become four, as seen at c,, where also the constituents of the other group of 
four are seen to have increased in bulk. By 9.30 the lower four had grown to 
seven, as is shown at ¢,,* where also the left hand granule is seen to be greatly 
swollen. At 9.50 the upper four granules were observed to be each faintly 
marked by a transverse line, and finally by 10.36 those four had become deve- 
loped into eight, as shown at c¢,, while the large granule most to the left was 
marked by a cross, indicating that it was undergoing division into four. The 
“fissiparous generation ” thus observed to take place was clear proof that these 
little bodies were really organisms ; while the manner in which the divisions 
occurred appeared to mark the species off from bacteria, im which the only 
recognised segmentation is in a line transverse to the longitudinal axis, as is 
illustrated by the sketches given in fig. 4 (see explanation of the Plates). This 
mode of growth explained also the peculiar arrangement of the granules, which 
serves to distinguish it from bacteria, viz., that when three or four are present 
in a group they are not, as a rule, arranged in a straight line. I suggest provi- 
sionally the name Granuligera for this little organism, of which there may, for 
aught I know, be various species. Its distinction from bacteria is a matter of 
considerable interest, because, although destitute of anything like vital move- 
ment, it often renders fluids as turbid as bacteria, and like them produces a 
rank smell in urine, followed in a few days by strong ammoniacal odour. So 
| far as urine is concerned, therefore, it seems to be an instance of an organism 
different from bacteria giving rise to putrefaction. 
About this time my study suffered from an epidemic of Granuligera. I 
* There were, no doubt, in reality eight; one of them being obscured by lying beneath the 
quadruple granule just formed out of one of the single ones. 
