Germ of the Southern Cattle Plague. 119 
as chemical composition, you will see, in the continual tumbling 
about, and turning over and over of their objects, a white, round or 
nearly so, colorless object directly under the eye, or numbers of these 
objects. When the germs in such a hanging drop culture have 
died from want of a sufficiency of nutrient material, you may see a 
large number of these objects, which could be easily mistaken for 
spores: but if we inoculate a new hanging drop culture from the 
same material used to prepare the former, it will be found impos- 
sible to fall into any such serious error, for it will be easily seen 
that these non-colored refracting points keep continually going out 
of sight, their place being taken by the coccoid non-refracting point 
still attached to the other end of the white substance, and by watch- 
ing one and the same organism in its continual turning over, first 
one appearance and then the other will be presented to the eye 
until the second coccoid end has become detached (Fig. 5).! 
What becomes of the uncolored transparent middle piece? 
I do not know! 
It appears, however, as if it underwent an almost immediate pro- 
cess of dissolution the moment it has become free from both of its 
polar attachments. That this substance does not represent a spore 
condition, or have any relation to spores, is to my mind entirely 
beyond all question, as I have searched most diligently for spores 
in old and fresh cultures, and others made at all kinds of tempera- 
tures, within the biological limits of these organisms. 
In my first-published description of the micro-organism of the 
swine plague I gave an erroneous description of the manner in 
Which the coccoid ends became freed from the white or connective 
substance, This white, non-refracting, wncolorable material does not 
become extended to nothing, and then break in two, leaving the coccoid 
ends with a delicate, colorless flagellum, or spermatozoid tail, tempo- 
rarily attached to one side, as I then said, and as Detmers described 
it in 1880; but the separation of these ends is direct, and by sharp 
segmentation. Were it otherwise we could not see the sporoid colorless 
ends of so many of these germs when freed from their appropriate 
pole ends 
There are days when one cannot study them continuously at all. 
The best way to study hanging drop cultures, when one desires to 
spend several hours over them, is to first make some cover-glass 
Pati. such a specimen will at once show that no spores are pre- 
sent. i 
