Scientific American Supplement, No. 643 | Page 6

of the point of anchorage, then shoot out the body with lightning-like rapidity, and bring it down like a hammer on some point of the decomposition. It rests here for a second or two, and repeats the process; and this is taking place by what seems almost like rhythmic movement all over the rotting tissue. The results are scarcely visible in the mass. But if a group of these organisms be watched, attached to a small particle of the fermenting tissue, it will be seen to gradually diminish, and at length to disappear.
Now, there are at least two other similar forms, one of which, Heteromita uncinata, is similar in action, and the other of which, Dallingeria drysdali, is much more powerful, being possessed of a double anchor, and springing down upon the decadent mass with relatively far greater power.
Now, it is under the action of these last forms that in a period varying from one month to two or three the entire substance of the organic tissues disappears, and the decomposition has been designated by me "exhausted"; nothing being left in the vessel but slightly noxious and pale gray water, charged with carbonic acid, and a fine, buff colored, impalpable sediment at the bottom.
My purpose is not, by this brief notice, to give an exhaustive, or even a sufficient account, of the progress of fermentative action, by means of saprophytic organisms, on great masses of tissue; my observations have been incidental, but they lead me to the conclusion that the fermentative process is not only not carried through by what are called saprophytic bacteria, but that a series of fermentative organisms arise, which succeed each other, the earlier ones preparing the pabulum or altering the surrounding medium, so as to render it highly favorable to a succeeding form. On the other hand, the succeeding form has a special adaptation for carrying on the fermentative destruction more efficiently from the period at which it arises, and thus ultimately of setting free the chemical elements locked up in dead organic compounds.
That these later organisms are saprophytic, although not bacterial, there can be no doubt. A set of experiments, recorded by me in the proceedings of this society some years since, would go far to establish this (Monthly Microscopical Journal, 1876, p. 288). But it may be readily shown, by extremely simple experiments, that these forms will set up fermentative decomposition rapidly if introduced in either a desiccated or living condition, or in the spore state, into suitable but sterilized pabulum.
Thus while we have specific ferments which bring about definite and specific results, and while even infusions of proteid substances may be exhaustively fermented by saprophytic bacteria, the most important of all ferments, that by which nature's dead organic masses are removed, is one which there is evidence to show is brought about by the successive vital activities of a series of adapted organisms, which are forever at work in every region of the earth.
There is one other matter of some interest and moment on which I would say a few words. To thoroughly instructed biologists, such words will be quite needless; but, in a society of this kind, the possibilities that lie in the use of the instrument are associated with the contingency of large error, especially in the biology of the minuter forms of life, unless a well grounded biological knowledge form the basis of all specific inference, to say nothing of deduction.
I am the more encouraged to speak of the difficulty to which I refer, because I have reason to know that it presents itself again and again in the provincial societies of the country, and is often adhered to with a tenacity worthy of a better cause. I refer to the danger that always exists, that young or occasional observers are exposed to, amid the complexities of minute animal and vegetable life, of concluding that they have come upon absolute evidences of the transformation of one minute form into another; that in fact they have demonstrated cases of heterogenesis.
This difficulty is not diminished by the fact that on the shelves of most microscopical societies there is to be found some sort of literature written in support of this strange doctrine.
You will pardon me for allusion again to the field of inquiry in which I have spent so many happy hours. It is, as you know, a region of life in which we touch, as it were, the very margin of living things. If nature were capricious anywhere, we might expect to find her so here. If her methods were in a slovenly or only half determined condition, we might expect to find it here. But it is not so. Know accurately what you are doing, use the precautions absolutely essential, and through years of the closest observation it will