Bergeys Manual of Determinative Bacteriology

Bergeys Manual of Determinative Bacteriology - John G. Holt

AXONOMY, "that branch of biology which treats of classification in accordance with a convention or law", is the neglected foster child of bacteriologists, most of whom call their pet Bacillus this or that-coccus, and for taxonomy care nothing at all. But however much classification may be neglected, nay, even be despised, it is not only the bookworm and the historian Who pursue it as an armchair study ; it is also a field where research is active, and there is increasing need that the newest ideas and techniques should be brought to bear on old problems of bacterial relationships. The modern approach collects strains into groups with stable characters and ignores minor differences that were once thought to be important ; when the groups have proved their value in classification they are given generic and specific names. Groups worked out according to this principle include the genus Salmonella and species like Streptococcus pyogenes and Str. agalactice, all of which have a serologieal basis. Much of the older work has now lost its value and should be reconsidered in the light of modern findings. The need for this is seen in the section on micrococci in "Bergey‘s Manual" ; only twenty-two species are recognized (scarcely one is well characterized), but there is an appendix of more than four hundred names of so-called micrococci. As Abd-El-Malek and Gibson said recently, "The genus Micrococcus provides what is probably the worst example in bacteriology of uncritical systematic work".