44 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
BACTERIA IN THE DAIRY. 

XII.—BACILLUS ACIDI LACTICI AND OTHER ACID ORGANISMS 
FOUND IN AMERICAN DAIRIES.* 

BY W. M. ESTEN, M. S. 
—_#+@——_ 
I.~—BRIHF HISTORY OF HARLY WORE 
In the year 1877 Lister, by means of a capillary pipette to 
which was attached a screw-head so adjusted that he could 
force out one-hundredth of a drop of a diluted solution of milk, 
obtained the first pure culture of a milk-souring organism, 
which he called Bacterium lactis. Lister thus has the honor of 
being the first to discover and isolate as a pure culture the 
organism which was subsequently more carefully studied by 
Hueppe, and named Lacillus acidt lactict, 
By means of modern bacteriological methods Hueppe was 
able to make a very thorough investigation of the physiological 
functions and morphology of this organism, which has been of 
much value as a standard for the work since done, even up to 
the present time. Although the characteristics of the organ- 
ism noted by him do not coincide in every detail with those of 
the organism recently studied by Gunther and Thierfelder and 
myself, they are all near enough in the essential points to be 
classed together. 
In 1886, Beyer, of Washington, D. C., studied lactic acid 
fermentations in milk, repeating some of the experiments of 
Hueppe. ‘The work was incomplete, for he reported studying 
but one sample of milk, and left out some of the more import- 
ant features of the analysis for determining the characteristics 
of this organism. ‘The morphology as described by him is 
identical with the one recently studied here. ‘The work is not, 
however, sufficient in detail to determine definitely whether or 
not he obtained Hueppe’s bacillus, though its power to curdle 
milk in a few hours was rather convincing evidence that he did. 

* The account herewith is taken from a more extended report which has been pre- 
pared by the author. 

