43 
days: on orange peel, no growth: on tigs and raisins, no growth, 
though subsequent experiments showed this to be due to the amount 
of P'lucose or fruit sugar contained. 
Further, a staple article of Chinese food, a duck dried and smoked, 
was obtained, and from this small pieces were cut and placed in sterile 
Petri dishes. These pieces were then liberally inoculated with a 
bouillon culture of the plague bacillus and the dishes placed in the 
incubator. Another portion was placed directly in a tube of bouillon, 
and its growth proved that it was free from bacteria, save the hay 
bacillus and its spores. 
For several days small pieces were cut oli‘ from those contained in 
the dishes, and these were also planted into bouillon tul)es. The length 
of life of the plague bacillus under these conditions and this microbial 
association is uncertain. For two or three days they were present in 
numbers; this number grew rapidly more limited, and by the twelfth 
day the plague bacilli were difficult of detection. Between this and the 
eighteenth day they disappeared completely, though the hay bacillus 
'was still active and grew in great abundance. 
Subsequently a large assortment of Chinese food products was 
obtained, and with these experiments were made. The products in 
(luestion consisted of the leg’s of smoked and dried ducks; dried 
oysters; dried cuttlefish; dried ducks’ gizzards; ducks’ gizzards dried 
and then placed in oil: smoked and dried pork: duck eggs preserved 
in a mixture of mud and rice chaff. In this last the mixture had 
orig’inallv been wet, but had dried out until there onlv remained a 
mass of pulverulent' earth and chaff surrounding the egg — in other 
words, dry earth. 
Portions from each of these specimens were thoroughly inoculated 
with a bouillon culture of the ])lague bacillus, and the dishes contain- 
ing them were placed in the incubator at 37° C. for about twenty-eight 
hours. Small pieces were then cut off each and these pieces planted 
into bouillon tubes, which were incubated for twenty-four hours. 
Of the seven specimens, three alone showed any growth viz, the 
p(n*k, the dried gizzard, and the cuttlefish. 
A .specimen from the growth in such case was removed and stained 
with carbol-thionin .solution (the stain by election for plague bacilli), 
and microscopic examination showed the following: On the pork the 
growth was the B. subtilis (hay bacillus) alone: on the dried gizzard, 
hav bacillus: on the dried cuttlefish, hav bacillus and an ordinarv 
* « » 
mold. 
In view of these results, therefore, I would respectfully submit the 
opinion that it is unlikely that the Chine.se food ])roducts in (piestion 
could convey the germ of plague, even should they accidentally become 
contaminated with the same, and under the ordinarv conditions of com- 
