The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-06-07
SOME GLIMPSES
OF BACTERIA.
Very Interesting Facts About Microbes
or Germs.
Micro Organisms Which Produce 2S1, 500, 000,-
600 Living Beings in Forty-eight
Hours-Ptomaines.

Far down in the scale of plant life is a
certain great group. whose individuals are
spoken of in general way as micrO-Organ-
isms. or microbes or germs. One great fam
lily of the group of micro organisms is called
''yeasts." The commercial value of the
single yeast plant may be estimated from
the fact that the cake of yeast costing the
consumer l cent contains many million
plants, says a writer in Harper's Weekly.
When these yeast plants, well distributed
through the dough, are set in a warm place,
they being to grow, and in order to grow they
must consume food. Now, the -four aud salt
and water in the dough are very choice
viands for these little plants; they assim-
iate some elements, and set free, among
other things. earbonic acid gas This occu-
pies much more space than the carbon and
oxygen occupied in the -four. and the gas,
as il expands, rises" the dough, rendering
it light and porous. At the right mo-
ment off goes the whole mass to the oven,
where the lives of the myriad budding
plants are soon extingulshed; and when
we eat the bread we eat the yeast cells
along with the fragments of the cells of the
wheat or rye of the -four.
Another familiar group of micro-organ-
isms are the molds; and still another group
of lowliest, tiniest plants, closely allied TO
the fungi, are the acknowledgements or
gansms so simple in structure as to be
almost completely represented by lines and
dots, bnt endowed with such limtleSS
powers of reproduction as almost to shame
the multiplication table. Under the most
powerful lenses they are seen to consist OF
minute mass OF granular protOplasm,
surrounded by thin, Structureless mem-
Drane.
When we put them under favorable con-
ditions OF growth and give them food
enough, they may be seen to divide across
the middle, each portion soon
BECOMING LARGER,
And again dividing, so that it has been cal
culated that single germ, under favorable
conditions might, at the end of two days,
have added to the worlds living beings 2S1,-
800, coo, 600 new individual bacteria. Indeed,
if this sort Of thing were 10 go on for few
weeks unhindered, pretty much all the
oxygen. carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen
available for life purposes would be used
up, there would be corner in life stuff, and
even the master, man, would be forced to
the wall But numerous causes arrest their
spread, and the bacteria, In the long run,
are held closely within bounds the world
over.
Indeed, life goes hard with many forms,
and but for a curious provision for their
is likely that many species would soon die
out.
1t is found that, when the conditions be-
come too unfavOrable for the continuance Of
life in some bacteria, a portion of the pro-
toplasm sequesters itself in one end of the
germ and surrounds itself with dense re-
sistant envelope. This is called a spore.
The old she'll falls away, and this spore is
now capable Of resisting vicissitudes Of tenn
perature. such as would have destroyed it
In its other form. Restore the spore, how
ever, TO favorable surroundings and it bursts
its protecting shell and energies a thin
skinned ana vulnerable but an active and
perhaps a triumphant germ.
All Of the bacteria, so Tar as we know,
have the POWER, in nOurishing themselves,
of tearing asunder other forms of matter.
assimilatlng part OF il in new eombina-
tons in their own bodies and setting Tree
the rest. These chemical substances which
are set free by living, growing bacteria are
of the most diverse characters. They may
be acid or alkaline, aromatic or bad-smeil-
ing, harmless or very injurious to man.
The soil forms the great living and lurk-
ing place OF the more common forms, aud
from this they are spread far and wide into