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Characteristics of bacteriophage KM1, which infects Clostridium butyricum, are described, and several important properties are compared with those of phage 5, which infects the same species. Phage KM1 has a hexagonal head and a tail with a contractile sheath. Agarose gel electrophoresis patterns of Bg/II, EcoRI and HindIII fragments of the two phage DNAs differed greatly. The G+C contents were 30.5 mol% for phage KM1 and 35.4 mol% for phage 5. Among the 32 strains of clostridia tested, phage KM1 infected only C. butyricum MII588. Other properties of phage KM1 are also discussed.