
OF PUTREFACTION AND OTHER FERMENTATIVE CHANGES. 325 
turbed in the cotton-wool in which they were packed. This proved to have 
been a very fortunate arrangement, the long narrow form of the vessels and 
their covers, and the mass of cotton about them, having so interfered with 
evaporation, that a considerable proportion of the liquid remained in the glasses. 
On closely inspecting them on the 6th of August 1872, I saw that in both the 
part of the glass that had been left dry by the slow evaporation was studded 
over with little round whitish gelatinous-looking bodies, smaller than pins’ heads, 
which I thought might perhaps be a fungus related to the torula, a surmise which 
was at once verified by examination of the glass containing the urine. Having 
raised the test-tube cover, after wiping its lower part with 1 to 20 watery solu- 
tion of carbolic acid, I succeeded in picking up with a mounted needle (passed 
through the flame after washing the wooden handle with carbolic solution), a 
portion of one of the little gelatinous bodies, and submitted it to the microscope. 
It proved to be made up of plants of an exquisitely delicate filamentous fungus, 
of which 6, in Plate X XIT. fig. 6, represents one young plant entire, giving off a 
branch, and ¢.a somewhat larger plant, bearing two oval bodies considerably 
thicker than the thread from which they spring, which must be looked upon as 
spores (conidia). Ind, e, and fare given portions of other filaments bearing 
similar conidia. Such conidia were also seen free and pullulating, either in pairs, 
asin g, h, and 2, or more rarely in somewhat larger groups as at 4, which, in 
fact, constituted a torula undistinguishable from the original Torula Ovalis. 
But while some of the buds proceeding from the filaments had thus the char- 
acter of toruloid conidia, differmg from ordinary branches not only by their 
form but by their thicker and more substantial character, it was more common 
to see sprouts presenting the opposite condition of extreme slenderness, as at ” 
and 0, and similar delicate bodies were often seen free, commonly in pairs, as 
represented in the series /, p,q, 7. Of these, / resembles in its thicker half a 
very young plant such as m, while its more slender portion corresponds with p. 
This again, as well as the still more delicate g and 7, seemed to be neither more 
nor less than bacteria, as was shown not only by their form, but by the fact 
that precisely similar bodies were not unfrequently seen exhibiting active and 
perfectly characteristic movements. Further, there were many motionless 
bodies, such as s, which previous experience enabled me to recognise as young 
bacteria multiplying by segmentation, while they were fully equal in thickness 
to sprouts, such as 0, proceeding from the filaments. The identity of the 
bacteria with the filaments was further indicated by the precise similarity of the 
_ delicate transverse markings often observed in the former (as in p and 7) with 
those of young plants, such as m. 
That bacteria should originate from filamentous fungi was an idea entirely 
opposed to the preconceived notions with which I entered upon this inquiry ; 
for, in common with those authorities on the subject whose observations ap- 
VOL. XXVII. PART III. 4Q 
