THE SPIROCHETES- AND THEIR RELATION- 

 SHIP TO OTHER ORGANISMS 



PROFESSOR HENRY B. WARD 1 

 University op Nebraska 



In Ehrenberg 's famous work, "Die Infusionstierchen 

 als vollkommene Orgamsmen, " written in 1838, the 

 fourth family of the Vibrionides, or vibrating animal- 

 cules, includes five genera which that author regarded as 

 animals and distinguished as follows : 



The details of structure which Ehrenberg had else- 

 where worked out with too imaginative industry, he sadly 

 acknowledges are here ' ' barred to our present powers of 

 vision by virtue of their minuteness"; and he is forced 

 to depend upon scanty data to differentiate the to him 

 closely related genera. To-day three among the asso- 

 ciated genera are generally recognized as bacteria and of 

 the spirochetes alone is there doubt as to their proper 

 relationship in the systematic tree. 



However, Ehrenberg was not the first to observe such 



