136 Marshall Ward. — On the Characters , or 
or may not be distinct ; but we must be thankful for small 
mercies where Schizomycetes are concerned, and a great 
point is gained when we have, as here, good grounds for a 
safe conclusion. It does not affect the truth of the above 
statement if the Micrococcus - like form gives rise to a Bacillus - 
like form, or the Bacilli to Micrococci on different media> or 
under different conditions : the only fairly comparable cases are 
those where the forms are growing under like circumstances. 
This has now been recognised for some time by many of the 
workers in both the French and German schools of bacterio- 
logy, as reference to the works of Fliigge, Hueppe, Eisenberg, 
Miquel, Mace, and others abundantly testify. 
Miquel then proceeds to employ a character very difficult 
of application in this country, because the question whether a 
Schizomycete is pathogenic, zymogenic, or chromogenic is 
not answered forthwith by the circumstance of finding the 
given form in the tissues, or in a fermenting medium, and so 
on. It can only be determined by experiment, and I need 
not refer to the difficulties set up in this country owing to 
the clamour and activity of a possibly well-meaning, but 
certainly ill-informed, faction of sentimentalists. 
The next character employed by Miquel is an exceedingly 
useful one in general. If we take a sample of water, con- 
taining several forms of Schizomycetes, as almost all waters 
do, and distribute it equally in nutrient gelatine, in beef- 
broth, and in solutions containing sugar, the resulting growths 
are certain to differ, and often differ enormously. I assume 
that the conditions as to temperature, access of air and 
light, & c. are the same. 
The question then arises, are the differences due to the 
fact that the initial sample of water contained a number of 
aerobian species, capable of growing at the chosen tempera- 
ture, equal to the aggregate number of forms found in the 
three media? This question is a perfectly pertinent one, 
and we could put another, namely, are the different forms 
met with in the three different media mere adaptation-forms 
to these media ? 
