ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 
851 
Identity of Streptococcus pyogenes and Streptococcus ery- 
sipelatis.* — Dr. M. Kirchner records the case of a young soldier who 
was admitted to a military hospital for phthisis. After a period of about 
two months, during which he was injected with tuberculin, he was 
seized with a rigor. The tonsils swelled and became covered with 
white membrane. A microscopical examination failed to detect the 
bacilli of diphtheria, but disclosed the presence of Streptococcus 
pyogenes. Three days after he was attacked with well-marked facial 
erysipelas, in the bladders of which well-developed chain cocci were 
found. The case shows either that St. pyogenes caused the suppurative 
tonsillitis, and St. erysipelatis the erysipelas, and that the patient was 
suffering from two acute specific diseases at the same time, or that the 
same micro-organism was the cause both of the tonsillitis and of the inflam- 
mation of the skin. The cocci of course are apparently of the same 
size, and have the same staining reactions. 
Inoculation Experiments with Giard’s Pathogenic Light- 
bacillus. f — Mr. H. L. Russell injected two large specimens of Palsemon 
serratus with a 24 hours old sea-water bouillon cultivation of Giard’s 
light-bacillus. The inoculations were made between the first and second 
abdominal segments, and underneath the chitinous plate covering the 
sterna. Two other specimens were wounded in a similar way but not 
injected. No light was observable on the seventh day after injection, but 
when either of the injected animals was taken up in the hand, a pale 
phosphorescent light illuminated it all over. This phenomenon, which 
did not occur in the uninjected animals, was observed for about three 
weeks. Microscopical examination and plate cultivations made from 
the tissues of the injected animals failed to reveal anything, and the 
author thinks that the illumination is in some way or other connected 
with muscular movements or contractions. In any case the experiment 
showed that the illumination phenomenon was not of a pathogenic nature. 
Alexin of the Rat.J — Mr. E. H. Hankin finds that the discrepancy 
between his results and those of Metschnikoff as to the immunity con- 
ferred by the alexin of the rat is explained by the difference in the age 
of the anthrax cultivations used for mixing with the serum. By using 
a six months old agar cultivation, the same results as those obtained 
by the French observers ensued. The animals all died, although there 
was some postponement of the event. When fresh spores are used under 
similar circumstances, these results are as a rule reversed. Sometimes 
however, even when fresh spores are used, the animals died simul- 
taneously with the control animals, or only a little later. For this 
aberration the author suggests some unusual condition of the serum, but 
he does not pretend to explain the difference between the action of the 
spores of old and young cultivations. 
The next step leads to the behaviour of the phagocyte. The author 
had concluded that the inhibitory action of rat’s serum was due to its 
germicidal properties, but Roux and Metschnikoff had found that the 
majority of the spores were contained within phagocytes. Hence it is 
assumed that the serum of the rat exerts a strong chemotactic action on 
* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., xi. (1892) pp. 749-52. 
f Tom. cit., pp. 557-9. % Tom. cit., pp. 722-7. 
