The Nitric Organisms

Abstract

I MUCH regret to learn from your last issue that Mr. Waringon considers that I failed to do justice to his work on this subject in my recent lecture at the Royal Institution, and which was reprinted in your columns of the 9th inst. Mr. Warington complains that I have attributed to Winogradsky, and not to himself, the separation of the nitric ferment; I think, however, that Mr. Warington does not correctly understand the sense in which I employ the word “separate,” or rather “isolate” (that is the exact word which I did use), for it does not appear to me that Mr. Warington has ever claimed to have isolated this ferment; thus, on referring again to his most recent publication on this subject, I read, “An attempt to isolate the nitric organism by the dilution method failed, but apparently only one other organism—a stout bacillus, growing on gelatin—was present in some of the cultures” (Chem. Soc. Journ., July 1891). In an exhaustive memoir, due reference to the above attempt of Mr. Warington's would, of course, have been made; but in the impressionist sketch, which is alone possible in a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution, I take it that a lecturer must be allowed to use his own discretion as to what does and what does not fit into the small frame of sixty minutes without laying himself open to the imputation of having unjustly neglected or emphasized the work of individual investigators. Mr. Warington's name is so indissolubly connected with the subject of nitrification that it is the more surprising to me that he should have taken exception to the passage in question of my lecture.