132 



TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



We have to deal, in fact, with the decrease of the numbers 

 of bacteria expressed by the gas-volume law, pv = constant. 

 So much is clear merely from the inspection of the experimental 

 data. The law of diminution may, however, be more minutely 

 studied from smoothed or graduated figures, and these I give 

 in the table below. The method of graduation is explained 

 in Appendix II. Text-figure 1 is a graph of these numbers. 



Days. 



Expt. 



6 



10 



11 



12 

 0-2 



Nos. of bacteria in unit 

 volume of culture as 

 percentages of the 

 original number 



I 



II 

 III 

 IV 



100 

 100 

 100 



18 

 7-6 

 21 



7-4 

 1-7 

 0-2 



3-5 

 0-5 

 0-04 



2-7 

 0-2 

 0001 



2-2 



0-004 



0-9 



0-6 



0-5 



0-4 



0-3 



•f days 



Fig. 1. Curves showing the rate of disappearance of intestinal bacteria from 



a sea-water culture. The points plotted represent the graduated figures of 



the table above. 



