A Micro-Glucide Dish.

The difficulties met in endeavoring to obtain chemically pure products have incited us to try to develop a micro-technique for the study of carbohydrate fermentation by bacteria. By this technique, used by us since 1941 and involving over five hundred different strains, we have found that we gained much room in our incubators, made a notable saving of time in the preparation of the material, in the inoculating of the bacteria, and in the reading of the data. Furthermore, we obtained a practical constancy of results which' makes possible comparison of the action on the different materials used. This is not always the case when using current methods. Other bacteriologists, such as Hauduroy (1938), have noticed the inconsistencies in the customary techniques employed. The saving of purified carbohydrates by this method is considerable; in fact, a research on the fermentation of twenty different glucides can be made with a total weight of only 40 cg, which is only two cg apiece.