THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF BLOOD GLOBULES. 327 
thirty-six hours it is as abundant as the first. The same 
series of phenomena are repeated till the liquid has com- 
pletely lost its colour, and materials of nutrition are no longer 
supplied. The experiment may be made with blood that 
has been beaten up and defibrinized ; so. it is not the fibrine 
which furnishes the micro-ferments : they come from the 
globules, in which they may be found by simple methods. 
The globules may be retained on the filter after a prelimi- 
nary action upon them of solution of sulphate of soda. They 
are then placed on a glass slab, and ground with a glass 
muller. By these means the globules are torn, and the 
micro- ferments, set free, swim in the liquid, with their 
proper oscillatory motion. 
This experiment may be varied by taking a drop of de- 
fibrinized blood, and placing it under the microscope, when 
a mass of globules will be seen, in which it is often difficult 
or impossible to find a single micro-ferment. Let a drop of 
distilled w T ater be placed so as to pass under the glass cover 
of the object, and as it penetrates, the globules grow pale, 
and then become granular, soon breaking up and leaving in 
their place masses of very mobile micro-ferments, without a 
trace of pre-existing membrane. 
The micro-ferments of blood behave like those of the liver 
in this method of evolution, and like those of fibrine. For 
at first they can, under certain circumstances, attach them- 
selves together in chaplets more or less long. Placed in vials 
containing diluted starch creosoted, with or without addition 
of pure carbonate of lime, they rapidly develop into bacteria 
and bacterides. 
These micro-ferments of blood-globules behave like fer- 
ments first under the form of microzymas, then in chaplets, 
and bacteria during, or after, this evolution. The starch of 
flour is rapidly liquefied by them ; the mixture soon presents 
the characters of soluble starch and dextrine. If pure car- 
bonate of lime is added previously to the starch liquid, and 
it is filtered, after a prolonged reaction the mixture lets fall 
a precipitate occasioned by the oxalic acid formed under the 
action of the ferments, which sometimes remain in the 
mycrozymic condition all the while, showing that this evolu- 
tion into chaplets and bacteria is not necessary to their action 
upon the starch. The starch mixture is always rendered 
fluid before the appearance of the bacteria. 
The writers affirm that the micro-ferments still contained 
in the cells are in a condition for reproduction. They say 
they have often seen the birth of- a great number of small 
cells, pale, slightly segmented (framboise es) , and much re- 
