594 
ANALYSIS OF CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
ever, the most careful search, I could not discover any spore 
in the organs or blood of these two creatures. So I resolved 
to repeat these experiments on the first opportunity, but with 
spores of another shape. Before this opportunity occurred, 
however, facts of another kind caused me to revert to this 
question. In the course of last year, in studying the action 
of putrified blood on animals, I found a very short time after 
the injection of this blood beneath the skin, very long vibri- 
onae in the veins of the adjacent parts. An attentive exami- 
nation of several similar cases led me to believe that these 
long vibrionae could not be formed in such a brief period in the 
blood of the veins, but that they had penetrated therein either 
by absorption or through the capillaries torn in the process 
of injection. To be assured of this, it was necessary to inject 
into the tissues bodies which could not propagate themselves 
there, and possessing those precise characteristics which 
would always lead to their being readily detected. The spores of 
the mushroom respond to these conditions : they are uniform in 
each species ; are provided with a rigid tegument that prevents 
their becoming distorted ; are a long time before submitting 
to alteration; are immense in number; and, lastly, according 
to their species, their volume is very variable. My first ex- 
periments were made with exceedingly small spores — those 
of the penicillium. I found them in all the organs ; but, 
smaller than the blood-corpuscles, these spherical bodies 
having no particular characters, and resembling in several 
respects fat-globules, might give rise to mistakes. 
In one of the experiments, an abscess having formed at the 
part where the injection had been practised, a great number 
of leucocytes contained one, tw r o, or three, and even four 
spores of the injected penicillium. The penetration of foreign 
bodies into leucocytes had been already remarked by Virchow, 
and M. Robin had also noticed the presence of atoms of 
charcoal in the leucocytes found in certain sputa ( Legons 
sur les Humeurs, p. 485, Paris, 1867, and Dictionnaire Encyclo- 
pedique , art. Leucocyte^ p. 277) ; but the present instance appears 
to me, nevertheless, interesting from the clearness of the 
result. In treating these leucocytes with acetic acid or 
potass, the intact spores were disengaged, and their inclusion 
was rendered manifest by the transparency the leucocyte at 
first acquired under the action of the reagent. 
These experiments were repeated with spores of various 
sizes, obtained from fungi of different species. I will only 
speak at present of those made with the maize blight ( ustilago 
maidis). The spores of this fungus are black, spherical, and 
rigid, and the surface uneven. All these characters render 
