At the time investigators were trying to cultivate the amoebae of the human intestine (Entamoeba coli and E. histolytica), amoebae were often encountered in the cultures which were referred to the species “Amoeba limax,” with many sub-species. Subsequently it was found that the cysts of these cultural amoebae are very common and that it is possible to cultivate amoebae from nearly every source. Consequently it was concluded that these forms do not really live in the human intestine but that the cultural amoebae developed from cysts, occasionally ingested with food, the cysts not having developed in the intestine. This is Walker's (1911) view, but Chatton and Lalung Bonaire (1912) hold that the limax amoebae (hereafter called limax) can live in the intestine, not only in the form of cysts but also as motile amoebae. Cultures made from these stools showed amoebae and uninucleate cysts. The latter were not found in the faeces, which showed only the motile stages, without however any signs of division. The cultures showed this amoeba to be of the common Umax-type with a vesicular nucleus containing a large karyosome. These observations are important because they contradict the hypothesis that Entamoebae when cultivated show the features of limax.

(1) In the discharge from a case of acute urethritis spirochaetes were found which it is believed were the causal agent of the disease.

(2) The spirochaetes were most commonly 8μ to 12μ in length, and showed four or five spirals; but the range in the three hundred parasites measured was from 5μ, to 20μ. They appeared to multiply both by longitudinal and transverse division and by the formation of coocoid bodies. The parasites passed through an intracellular phase which seemed to be as follows: some of the spirochaetes enter the epithelial scales lining the urethra, become quiescent, and break up into coccoid bodies. These bodies multiply so as to form masses of granules from which young spirochaetes develop, grow to about the normal size, and eventually escape.

(3) The name Spirochaeta urethraeis proposed for the parasite.

Owing to the active interest now being taken in all that concerns lice and their habits, especially in connection with the war, it seems expedient to forestall a fuller publication, now in preparation, by giving an account of the copulatory apparatus and the curious process of copulation in Pediculus humanus Linn.