themselves, in their culture, into veritable germs. The latter are
merely cells, or articulations always ready to multiply by division,
except when the particular conditions in which they become true germs
are known.

"The yeast of beer is a striking example of these cellular productions,
being able to multiply themselves indefinitely without the apparition
of their original spores. There exist many mucedines (Mucedinae?) of
tubular mushrooms, which in certain conditions of culture produce
a chain of more or less spherical cells called Conidae. The latter,
detached from their branches, are able to reproduce themselves in the
form of cells, without the appearance, at least with a change in the
conditions of culture, of the spores of their respective mucedines.
These vegetable organisms can be compared to plants which are cultivated
by slipping, and to produce which it is not necessary to have the fruits
or the seeds of the mother plant.

"The anthrax bacterium, in its artificial cultivation, behaves very
differently. Its mycelian filaments, if one may so describe them, have
been produced scarcely for twenty-four or forty-eight hours when they
are seen to transform themselves, those especially which are in free
contact with the air, into very refringent corpuscles, capable of
gradually isolating themselves into true germs of slight organization.
Moreover, observation shows that these germs, formed so quickly in the
culture, do not undergo, after exposure for a time to atmospheric air,
any change either in their vitality or their virulence. I was able to
present to the Academy a tube containing some spores of anthrax bacteria
produced four years ago, on March 21, 1887. Each year the germination
of these little corpuscles has been tried, and each year the germination
has been accomplished with the same facility and the same rapidity as at
first. Each year also the virulence of the new cultures has been tested,
and they have not shown any visible falling off. Therefore, how can we
experiment with the action of the air upon the anthrax virus with any
expectation of making it less virulent?

"The crucial difficulty lies perhaps entirely in this rapid reproduction
of the bacteria germs which we have just related. In its form of a
filament, and in its multiplication by division, is not this organism at
all points comparable with the microbe of the chicken cholera?

"That a germ, properly so called, that a seed, does not suff