GREEN-PRODUCING CHROMOGENIC MICRO-ORGANISMS IN WOOL. 321 



upon the table. Since the original specimen was submitted to me 

 several other specimens from different parts of the Colony have 

 been sent to me by the Chief Yeterinary Inspector of the Board 

 of Health, Mr. Stanley, and all have yielded the same results. 



The organism is a bacillus, and in the specimens of wool 

 examined, were associated varying ' quantities of a strepto- 

 coccus and a large coccus. After much trouble the bacillus 

 and the streptococcus have been obtained pure, and it is the 

 bacillus and not the streptococcus which produces the pigment. 

 It is an actively motile, aerobic (and facultative anaerobic) and 

 liquefying bacillus about one micro, in length. In various culture 

 media it grows at the temperature of the room, but more rapidly 

 in the incubator. In gelatine plate-cultures colonies are rapidly 

 developed which give to the medium a deep green colour. At 

 the end of two or three days liquefaction commences around each 

 colony, and in about a week the gelatine is completely liquefied. 



In gelatine thrust cultures development is most abundant near 

 the surface, and the liquefaction is thus at first in the form of a 

 funnel, but later on all the upper part of the medium is liquefied 

 and rests upon the lower unliquefied part at a horizontal plane of 

 separation. The surface of the liquefied part is covered with a 

 yellowish-green film : at the plane preparation a quantity of this 

 same film rests upon the unliquefied part and the entire mass 

 exhibits a fluorescent green colour. 



Surface cultures on nutrient agar are at first by reflected light 

 white, by transmitted light deep brown. The green colour appears, 

 in about ten hours, and in thirty hours the whole of the agar 

 shows the beautiful fluorescent green colour. The bacillus grows 

 well in dextrose agar — in thrust cultures small dirty white globular 

 colonies appear along the needle-track. On potato a rather dry 

 yellowish-green or brown layer is formed. Old cultures gradually 

 lose the fluorescent green colour and take on a dark olive-green,, 

 and finally a brown non-fluorescent colour takes its place. 



To prove that this bacillus is the real cause of the green colour- 

 ation in the wool submitted to me, normal wool from the fleece^ 



U— Nov. 7, 1894. 



