42 
Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh, [dec. 5, 
{g) Penicillium glaiicum. 
Penicillimn glaucum grows well in flour-paste in a warm damp 
place. It is destroyed by salicylic acid, iodine, potassium iodate, 
and sodium fluosilicate ; for no growths made their appearance in 
flour-paste (inoculated with the spores of this fungoid growth) after 
forty-six days’ incubation. 
IV. The Vitality op Bacillus tuberculosis and its Spores. 
Im March of the present year (1887) I received from Mr John 
Snodgrass,* jun., of Glasgow (who is suffering with acute general 
phthisis) typical specimens of sputum, which contained a large 
quantity of old discoloured blood, also lung fibre, debris of various 
kinds, and numbers of Bacillus tuber cidosis. Fig. 8a is a drawing 
from a cover-glass preparation. 
Small quantities of sputum were mixed with calcium sulphate 
and calcium carbonate, previously sterilised at a temperature of 
135° C., and these mixtures were placed in sterilised tubes (fig. 7), 
and then hermetically sealed. Twelve of these dry tubes, each con- 
tained about 10 grammes of the mixture. Twelve dry sterilised 
tubes (fig. 8), not hermetically sealed,, also contained about 10 
wool\ 
plug j 
¥ig. 8. 
grammes of the mixture of sputum, calcium sulphate, and calcium 
carbonate (these mineral substances constituting the principal in- 
gredients contained in the dust of the atmosphere). The twenty- 
four tubes were kept at a dry heat of 32° C., from one to six 
months. Two hermetically sealed tubes and two of the open tubes 
were opened after being exposed to a dry heat of 32° C. for one 
* The translator of Heine’s “ Religion and Philosophy in Germany,” also 
“Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos, from the Prose of Heinrich Heine.” (Triibner 
& Co.) 
