BACTERIA IN FRESHLY DRAWN MILK. O30: 
most cows this Bact. lactis acidi is absent, and when present it 
is present in very small numbers. Freudenreich (Rev. Gen. 
d. Lait II., p. 241, 1903), in a similar way, made a careful 
study of the species of bacteria found in fore milk and reached 
similar conclusions, being able to find the typical lactic organ- 
ism, Lact. lactis acidzt, only in very small numbers. Barthel 
(Rev. Gen. d. Lait. I., p. 505, 1902), performing similar experi- 
ments, reached similar results, and the experiments that have 
been more recently performed in our own laboratory have only 
tended to emphasize the conclusion previously reached that, at 
least in the animals which we have had the opportunity of 
experimenting upon, typical lactic organisms are present in 
only very small numbers in fore milk. This discrepancy be- 
tween the results of Harrison and Cumming and those of others 
has led us to some further experiments upon the same sub- 
ject, part of which are given in other papers in this report and 
call for a brief comment upon results. A brief summary of 
our experiments up to the present time may be given here, as 
indicating that the results obtained in Middletown and at 
Storrs are still at variance with those obtained by Harrison and 
Cumming. 
Numbers of bacteria.—The first striking difference is in the 
numbers of bacteria which are found in the fore milk when the 
milk is drawn with proper precautions. A long series of ex- 
periments was performed at Storrs, see pages 52-62, in which 
moderate precautions were used. These consisted simply in 
washing the udder and the teats of the cow and drawing the 
milk into milk pails which had been thoroughly sterilized and 
were closed with the special cover, described in a previous 
paper. This, of course, did not exclude all bacteria coming 
from the air, for some would inevitably fall into the milk pail. 
The chance for external contamination was, therefore, very 
much greater than when the milk is drawn directly into a- 
sterilized vial. ‘Ihe results, however, gave far lower numbers 
than those found by Harrison and Cumming. In the experi- 
ments given in other parts of this report, the average of about 
70 experiments was 6,900 per cubic centimeter, the highest 
“number being 48,000. These numbers were obtained without 
aseptic precautions, and with aseptic precautions which exclude 
