New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. Toe 
8. Vitality on culture media, moderate. iy tas ! 
9. Temperature relations. Thermal death point, 48-50° C.; 
Optimum, 25-30° C.; Maximum, above 38° C.; Mini- 
mum, below 10° C. 
10. Killed readily by drying. 
12. Sunlight. Exposure, not on ice, at midday in Sept. showed 
decrease after 1 minute, increasing to destruction of 
90-100 per ct. after 20 minutes. 
IV. Pathogenic to many fleshy vegetables of the North 
Temperate Zone. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
A considerable number of the cultivated plants in the North 
temperate zone suffer at times from a bacterial soft rot caused 
by a non-chromogenic, liquefying bacillus. 
This comparative study of forty-three pathogenic strains 
derived from six different vegetables indicates that the results 
of fermentation tube tests with dextrose, lactose and saccha- 
rose offer the only usable cultural basis for differentiating 
these strains. However the cultures of the entire group have 
a weak fermentative power which, with very few exceptions, 
produces only a little more than enough gas to become evident 
in the fermentation tube. At other times the same strains 
produce no gas at all. These variations make the results of 
the fermentation tube test an unsatisfactory basis for 
classification. 
Unless later studies of the pathogenicity of these cultures 
shall offer a basis for subdividing them, there is no apparent 
reason why they should not all be considered as somewhat 
variant members of a single botanical species. 
