In employing ferro cyanide-citrate agar (1) to obtain direct counts of colon-aerogenes organisms in feces, soils, vegetation, sewage and water supplies (2), we have been impressed by certain practical advantages of the direct plating method which suggests that a simplified technic, adapted to routine requirements, may prove to be useful in water analysis.Briefly these advantages over the usual fermentation methods are as follows:1. The direct count is less subject to error and is inherently more accurate than an estimate of numbers based on inoculation of fractional portions of the sample in a series of tubes of liquid medium.2. The plating process is simple, consisting only of planting the plates and counting the colonies. When ferrocyanide-citrate agar is employed, further confirmatory steps appear to be unnecessary in ordinary routine.3. The completed findings are obtained in a shorter time; viz., in thirty-six to forty-two hours. Presumptive indications are available in about twenty-eight hours.4. Less labor is required. 5. The direct counts on ferro cyanide-citrate agar are not obscured by overgrowths and are not interfered with by common lactosefermenting organisms.6. For obtaining pure cultures of Bact. coli or Bact. aerogenes, the poured plate, as a source from which to fish colonies, is much superior to Endo's medium or eosin methylene blue agar, inoculated by the surface streak method.7. By means of the distinctive appearance of the colon-aerogenes
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