Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/47

Rh

The observations of Cohn, made about thirty years ago, and those of De Bary shortly afterwards, brought into notice a group of organisms to which the name 'bacterium' or 'microbe' is given. They were seen to vary in shape; some were rounded specks called cocci, others were straight rods called bacilli, others were curved or spiral rods, vibrios or spirilla?. All were characterized by their extreme minuteness, and required for their examination the highest powers of the best microscopes. Many bacteria measure in their least diameter not more than of an inch,  the diameter of a human white blood corpuscle. Through the researches of Pasteur, Lord Lister, Koch and other observers, bacteria have been shown to play an important part in nature. They exercise a very remarkable power over organic substances, especially those which are complex in chemical constitution, and can resolve them into simpler combinations. Owing to this property, some bacteria are of great economic value, and without their agency many of our industries could not be pursued; others again, and these are the most talked of, exercise a malign influence in the production of the most deadly diseases which afflict man and the domestic animals.

Great attention has been given to the structure of bacteria and to their mode of propagation. When examined in the living state and magnified about 2,000 times, a bacterium appears as a homogeneous particle, with a sharp definite outline, though a membranous envelope or wall, distinct from the body of the bacterium, cannot at first be recognized; but when treated with reagents a membranous envelope appears, the presence of which, without doubt, gives precision of form to the bacterium. The substance within the membrane contains granules which can be dyed with coloring agents. Owing to their extreme minuteness it is difficult to pronounce an opinion on the nature of the chromatine granules and the substance in which they lie. Some observers regard them as nuclear material, invested by only a thin layer of protoplasm, on which view a bacterium would be a nucleated cell. Others consider the bacterium as formed of protoplasm containing granules capable of being colored, which are a part of the protoplasm itself, and not a nuclear substance. On the latter view, bacteria would consist of cell plasm enclosed in a membrane and destitute of a nucleus. Whatever be the nature of the granule-containing material, each bacterium is regarded as a cell, the minutest and simplest living particle capable of an independent existence that has yet been discovered.

Bacteria cells, like cells generally, can reproduce their kind. They multiply by simple fission, probably with an ingrowth of the cell wall, but without the karyokinetic phenomena observed in nucleated cells. Each cell gives rise to two daughter cells, which may for a time remain