PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON PHOSPHORESCENT' BACTERIA FROM SEA-WATER. By Dr. Oscar Katz. Influenced by a memoir recently published by Dr. Fischer, on a light-producing bacteri>im found in sea-water near the Danish Island of St. Croix, in the West Indies (1), and also by his state-ments on another kind of fission-fungus derived from dead marine fish out of the Baltic Sea and the Berlin Aquarium (2), I com-menced to look for phosphorescent schizomycetes which might occur in the sea-water of our vicinity (Sydney). My endeavours have hitherto proved so far successful that up to now I have been able to obtain three kinds of this \ery interesting group of micro-organisms, which are capable of cultivation in various nutritive substances, which can be transferred to marine animals (fish, crus-taceans), so as to show what often happens spontaneously (so-called self-phosphorescence of fishes, <kc.), and which on being added to common sea-water are able to render this luminous in such a way that it pi-oduces an effect similar to certain kinds of what is known under the general name of phosphorescence of sea-water. (1) " Bacteriologische Untersuchungen auf einer Reise nach Westindien " von Dr. Fischer, Mariuestabsarzt. II. " Uebereinen lichtentwickelndeu ia Meerwasser gefundenen Spaltpilz, Zeitschrift f. Hygiene, Bd. II., Heft 1, Leipzig, 1887, pp. 54-92. (2) Addendum to the above publication, pp. 92-95. A paper by Dr. 0. Hermes on, as I must believe, the same bacterial species, which he has named Bacterium jjhospherescens, I have not yet seen. A short note of it is. given in "Nature," February 17, 1887, p. 377.
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