294 A Pathogenic Schizophyte of ike Hog. [April, 



plague Schizophytes did not develop helobacteria or lasting 

 spores, such a long preservation, to say the least, would be diffi- 

 cult to comprehend, even if an indefinitely continued and unin- 

 terrupted propagation of the Schizophytes by fission should be 

 possible, for an old straw stack, although affording excellent pro- 

 tection on account of its porosity, and by being a poor conductor 

 of heat, does not seem to be capable of providing the necessary 

 pabulum for innumerable generations for a whole year, or longer, 

 without changing the malignant character of the Schizophytes, 

 while, when cultivated in fluids, foreign to the body of the hog, 

 the same Schizophytes undergo an observable change as to their 

 malignancy — become less capable of producing mischief — in a 

 few generations. Further, the swine-plague Schizophytes, while 

 in the state of a single or double micrococcus, of a coccoglia, or 

 of a micrococcus chain, are known to succumb in a comparatively 

 short time to adverse influences, and it is very much to be 

 doubted whether they possess vitality enough to be preserved a 

 whole year, or longer, in a dormant state, even if protected by 

 such a porous body as an old straw stack. Moreover, for reasons 

 already stated, it would be impossible to account for the multi- 

 tude of single micrococci invariably present in all infectious 

 material, unless the swine-plague Schizophytes develop helo- 

 bacteria and lasting spores, which produce germs developing to 

 micrococci. If animal fluids, lung-exudation for instance, con- 

 taining swine-plague Schizophytes, are filtrated through several 

 papers, the latter, if fine enough, retain the micrococcus-chains, 

 the zoogloea-masses, most, or nearly all of the double, and a good 

 many of the single micrococci, while some of the latter, no mat- 

 ter how fine the papers may be, will pass through. But as the 

 single or spherical micrococci of swine-plague are not a product 

 of fission — do not proceed from micrococcus-chain, zooglcea- 

 masses, or double micrococci — and do not come from other sin- 

 gle micrococci, which, as far as I have been able to observe, de- 

 velop to double or bispherical bodies, in as well as out of the 

 zooglcea-mass, the fact that in a few hours or, at any rate, in a 

 day after the filtration, the number of single micrococci contained 

 in the filtrate is much larger than immediately after the filtration, 

 cannot be explained, unless something finer than the micrococci, 

 in other words, some micrococcus germs or the products of the 

 lasting spores, too fine to be distinguished by the human eye 



