ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 
389 
which the mobility is best exhibited was a pepton-free bouillon, with 
three per cent, glycerin, and having an acidity equivalent to 0*01 HC1. 
In this Bacillus typhosus retained its mobility for eight days and longer. 
In 1 per cent, pepton-bouillon it ceased to move after 72 hours, though 
during that time it was extremely lively when the medium was neutral 
or slightly acid. As the microbes move they pass in long strings parallel 
to the side of the drop. During observation the temperature should not 
sink below 12°. The mobility is diminished or destroyed by many con- 
ditions affecting the chemical and physical composition of the medium, 
such as too prolonged boiling, excess or defect of alkalinity and acidity, 
the presence of certain salts or substances, and so on. In clean spring, 
river, or sea water the typhoid bacillus is motionless, but it becomes mobile 
in the presence of a small quantity of organic matter. If it should lose 
its mobility it may regain it when the conditions are favourable. Bac- 
terium coli and other typhoid-like organisms examined by the author are 
motionless in acid media, and their mode of progression is quite differ- 
ent from that of the typhoid bacillus, which has a characteristic motion 
of its own. 
Red Cocco-bacillus of the Sardine. * — Dr. Du Bois Saint-Sevrin 
describes a chromogenic micro-organism which had contaminated the 
fish at a sardine factory. The contamination was the more interesting 
as seven out of the ten solderers were affected with whitlow. At the 
factory itself there was a strong odour of trimethylamin. Pus was taken 
from a suppurating whitlow and inoculated on gelatin and in bouillon ; 
from the former subcultures were made on potato and on sterilized 
sardines in oil. 
After an incubation of some hours at 37° there appeared an 
abundant bright red growth, exhaling the odour of trimethylamin. On 
microscopical examination there was found a very small cocco-bacillus, 
indeed the same organism which had been detected in the infected 
sardine boxes. 
The cocco-bacilli are very mobile ; they occur in pairs, are scarcely 
longer than broad, measuring 0 * 5-0 • 6 p . . They are easily stained, and 
as easily part with anilin colours. Liquefaction of the medium and the 
rose or ruby colour are prominent culture characters. Besides the 
bacilli, hanging drop cultivations show round red bodies, which may 
attain a diameter of 4-5 /a; these disappear when treated with nitric 
acid, and hence are probably a mixture of colouring matter and crystals. 
The colouring matter is soluble in alcohol and water. The alcoholic 
solution is heightened by addition of acid, and turned yellow by alkalies. 
Inoculation experiments on animals showed that the red microbe was 
devoid of pathogenic properties. The author, however, had also isolated 
an anaerobic micro-organism. This was a thin bacillus of variable 
length which did not liquefy gelatin but produced gas and exhaled a foetid 
odour. When inoculated on a rabbit, this organism also failed to pro- 
duce any morbid action by itself, but a mixture of the two microbes 
caused an abscess, in the pus of which both were found. From this it is 
supposed that the whitlows were the result of a mixed infection. 
Ann. Inst. Pasteur, viii. (1894) pp. 152-60 (2 figs.). 
