Some years ago, before the routine of tests for virulence had been established, complaints were received that several patients were being quarantined for diphtheria for unusually long periods. Examination of the eighteen-hour serum cultures from the nose and throat showed a rod form with bipolar metachromatic granules, and with marked tendency to parallel arrangement. The organism was isolated, and it was at once clear that we were dealing with a form which did not belong even to the diphtheria group, as it was motile in the hanging drop and showed terminal spores in older cultures. The patients were discharged from quarantine and a brief note was presented to the Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists in 1907 or 1908. It was our intention to carry out detailed investigation, but the cultures were lost and for a time no more such organisms appeared. In 1910 they were again noticed, but the morphologic distinctions were understood by the diagnostician and the patients were not isolated. For various reasons no further work was done other than to note the