On Faulty Rum and its Alleged Cause. 7 
appear, but the experiment was tried by us, on the con- 
trary, the opalescence was unaffe6led by the addition pf 
the glycerin. ' 
Upon standing the opalescent appearance of the dilute 
rum disappears and sediments or flocculencies slowly 
settle in the spirit. If these consist of masses of microbes, 
as maintained by Mr. and Mrs. Veley, and not of solid 
substances originally in solution in the undiluted spirit 
which have been thrown out of solution by dilution, we 
fail to see any reason why the microbes should remain 
^n suspension in the mobile strong spirit of relatively 
low density but slowly sink to the bottom in the less 
mobile and denser dilute liquid. 
If, instead of adding alcohol to the cloudy dilute 
'* faulty" rum, it is allowed to stand, and the clear upper 
liquid poured off, the sediment may be colle6led, and 
will be found to be very easily soluble in alcohol of from 
40 to 50 o.p. We adopted this course with about six 
litres of "faulty" rum, treating the sediment with strong 
alcohol in which the greater part of it either dissolved 
or became invisible, filtering the clear liquid through a 
Pasteur-Chamberland filter and examining the filtrate for 
" faultiness." Upon mixture with water it at once be- 
came very opalescent. The alleged bacterium appar- 
ently dissolved or otherwise disappeared in the alcohol, 
passed through the pores of the filter, and again became 
visible when the index of refra6lion was changed by dilu- 
tions. The results of this experiment strongly indicate 
the necessity of the remarkable theory of the cause of the 
'* faultiness" in rum advanced by the discoverers of the 
' . ... 
micro-organism, being received with the utmost caution. 
The negative results which we have universally ob- 
