[Interest of some additional biochemical tests for the classification of "Bacillus" (author's transl)].

In addition to previous taxonomic work, eight biochemical tests have been applied to the study of 580 Bacillus strains belonging to 22 species. The attack of chitin, melibiose and amygdalin can be used for the differentiation of some species. It is the same with most of the enzymes studied here, although Tween-esterase and DNase are often present in the majority of the isolates. RNase is still more frequent, being found in nearly all the strains. On the other hand, arginin-dihydrolase appears to be very rare and ornithin-decarboxylase seems always absent.