────────┬─────────────────┬────────────────── │ │ Condition at │ │ end of cure. No. of │ ├───────┬────────── tierce.│ Treatment. │Number │Percentage │ │of sour│ of sour │ │ hams. │ hams. ────────┼─────────────────┼───────┼────────── │ │ │ │Tested at several│ 5 │ 50 │stages in │ │ 1 │preparation for │ │ │cure with ham │ │ │thermometer which│ │ │had not been │ │ │cleaned. │ │ │ do │ 2 │ 20 │ │ │ │ │ │ │Tested once with │ 10 │ 100 2 │ham thermometer │ │ │dipped in culture│ │ │suspension of │ │ │anaerobic │ │ │bacillus isolated│ │ │from sour hams. │ │ │ do │ 7 │ 70 │ │ │ │ │ │ 3 │Not tested with │ 0 │ 0 │thermometer. │ │ │ do │ 0 │ 0 ────────┴─────────────────┴───────┴────────── Several hams from each tierce were examined bacteriologically. cultures being taken from the meat near the bone and from the bone marrow of the femur. In the sour hams from tierce 1 cultures taken from the meat near the bone showed the same anaerobic bacillus noted in other sour hams (i.e., the same bacillus which caused souring in Experiments I and II), but these cultures were contaminated with other bacteria which were probably introduced on the thermometer along with the ham-souring bacillus. None of the contaminating bacteria were capable, however, of producing a sour-meat odor when grown on the egg-pork medium. Pure cultures of the ham-souring bacillus were obtained from the bone marrow of some of these hams, showing that this bacillus had penetrated through to the bone marrow while the other bacteria had not. From the sour hams in tierce 2 the ham-souring bacillus was recovered readily, and often in pure culture, from the hams which had been pumped in the shank only, whereas it was usually contaminated with pickle bacteria in the hams which had been pumped in both body and shank. In the case of the sound hams in tierce 3, cultures taken from the meat near the bone and from the bone marrow of the femur were negative in the hams which had been pumped in the shank only, while cultures taken from corresponding points in the hams pumped in both body and shank showed ordinary pickle bacteria, which had evidently been introduced into the bodies of these hams in the pumping pickles. None of these hams exhibited the slightest sour odor.