Abstract
SOME five years have elapsed since Prof. Bütschli first published his investigations on the structure of some of the sulphur bacteria: Chromatium, Ophidomonas, and Beggiatoa, and his views on this subject have been circulated and discussed far and wide. In the above work Prof. Bütschli has restated at greater length, and at the same time more precisely, the position which he has been led to assume with regard to this delicate question. We say “delicate question,” because at present an opinion one way or another can only be based upon the degree of staining dexterity possessed by the investigator, and the results obtained are directly dependent upon the skill with which such operations are manipulated, whilst their interpretation is also subject to the individual intelligence or originality of the experimenter. Prof. Butschli's own words will best express the object which he has had in view in the publication of the present pamphlet. “Although I have made no fresh investigations in this direction during the years which have elapsed since I first published my views, it has appeared advisable to me for some time past to once more express myself on this question, and to support my opinion by the publication of micro-photographs. … I have, therefore, studied afresh during the past winter the greater number of the preparations I made in the years 1889-90, and I can only add that although some preparations have suffered in the interval, I have found everything exactly as I described it in 1890. … In the following exposition, which I have put together as briefly as possible, I have principally dealt with the doubts which have been thrown at, and attacks which have been made upon, my former statements.“ In taking up this essay the reader is, therefore, plunged into a keen scientific controversy, and for those who are concerned one way or the other, the subject-matter is replete with interest, and the scientific littérateur will gratefully accept the exhaustive bibliography bearing upon the question; whilst even the layman, who possibly feels but slender interest in the problems surrounding the structural character of these lowly forms of life, cannot but admire the beautiful plates with which the text is illustrated.
Weitere Ausführungen über den Bail der Cyanophyceen und Bacterien.
By Prof. O. Bütschli. (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1896.)
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Weitere Ausführungen über den Bail der Cyanophyceen und Bacterien. Nature 54, 124 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054124a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054124a0