710 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. No. 540. 



been driven to the verge of extermination by 

 the plume hunters. A strong public senti- 

 ment has been raised of late in favor of these 

 species, not only in this country, but in vari- 

 ous countries of Europe. Under the present 

 conditions the organized bird protectors of 

 this country, the Audubon societies, had 

 looked for an increase in these species under 

 our more recent laws regarding birds, but it is 

 plain to see that should the tendons become 

 popular with our surgeons for ligature and 

 suture purposes the birds might have a still 

 greater enemy. I do not consider the state- 

 ment sweeping when I say that the extermina- 

 tion of some species would be only a matter of 

 time. 



However, as the author concludes : " Think 

 of the comfort to the civil or military surgeon 

 in isolated places of knowing that he can have 

 a suture material at the end of his shot gun." 



Alexander W. Blain, Jr. 



Detroit College of Medicine. 



note on the occurrence on grain of organ- 

 isms resembling the bacillus coli 

 communis. 



It is a well-known fact that bacteria ex- 

 hibiting the reactions of the Bacillus coli com- 

 munis are widely distributed in nature, being 

 found even on material least liable to pollu- 

 tion from any animal sources. Thus Prescott* 

 has shown the occurrence of colon forms in 

 wheat flour, corn meal, breakfast foods and 

 various other food-stuffs onlj' remotely liable 

 to infection, as they are handled only on the 

 large scale and in the open field or large mill. 

 He also demonstrated their constant presence 

 on certain grains — oats, barley, rye, wheat, 

 buckwheat — taken directly from seed-ware- 

 houses and stores but slightly liable to con- 

 tamination. Papasotiriuf has also demon- 

 strated the presence of such forms on grains, 

 showing them to be commonly present when 

 small numbers of grains were studied. In his 

 investigations cultures of ten kernels each of 

 wheat, rye, barley, oats, peas, beans and corn 

 were made in dextrose broth in triplicate, 



• Science, New Series, Vol. XV., No. 375, 1902, 

 p. 303. 



■t Archiv fiir Hygiene, iWl, Vol. XLI., pp. 20'J- 

 210. 



fourteen out of the twenty-one cultures giving 

 positive results. The presence of these simu- 

 lating forms in dough and articles manufac- 

 tured from the hexoses has been studied care- 

 fully, esijecially by Lehmann and his pupils;* 

 since, however, during the preparation such 

 food-stuffs could become readily infected by 

 the necessary handling, the results have less 

 importance from the sanitary standpoint. 



During the past months I have made some 

 further investigations to determine whether 

 bacterial forms simulating closely in their 

 behavior the B. coli communis were present 

 on grain which in all probability could not 

 have become contaminated by direct contact 

 with faecal matter. In all investigations thus 

 far reported some doubt may be east on the 

 integrity of the samples, or at least there is a 

 possibility of contamination from handling or 

 manufacture. In November, 1904, a field of 

 rye was found in western Massachusetts 

 which, owing to the scanty growth, had not 

 been cut. The field is on light soil, on a level, 

 open, sandy plain, and stands well back from a 

 country road not heavily traveled. Inquiry 

 showed that the field had not been fertilized 

 and that no cattle had ranged through the 

 grain during the fall. This stand of grain, 

 therefore, may be taken as a typical open 

 country growth free from contaminating in- 

 fluences. From this field heads of grain were 

 picked with sterilized forceps and put into 

 sterilized glass tubes. These heads were in- 

 cubated separately in bouillon for twenty-four 

 hours and then differentiated out throiigh lac- 

 tose-litmus-agar into pure culture, following 

 the usual procedure. At the first test eight 

 heads were thus treated and one gave abun- 

 dant growth of an organism which repeatedly 

 showed the characteristics of B. coli com- 

 munis, and allied groups of organisms, solidi- 

 fying and decolorizing litmus milk, giving a 

 white expansive growth on agar, a heavy 

 growth in bouillon, fermentation in dextrose 

 broth with fifty to eighty per cent, gas pro- 

 duction, fermentation in lactose broth with 

 thirty to forty per cent, gas production, heavy 

 indol reaction, heavy reduction of nitrate and 

 a dirty yellowish growth on acid jotato. 



* See papers in Archiv fiir Hygiene. 



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