FOREWORD 13 



few other ingredients, and which had been exposed 

 to very high temperatures. 



Details concerning these experiments were 

 brought before the Medical and Chirurgical 

 Society of London, and have been published 

 in vol. xc. of its Transactions; but as up to 

 last year no one seemed to have repeated these 

 experiments, I took up the problem again, with 

 the definite intention of slightly varying the 

 composition of the solutions, and trying to make 

 the results of the experiments more uniformly 

 successful. 



In this I succeeded to a very remarkable extent, 

 so that the last series of experiments made during 

 this year were of such a decisive nature, and so 

 comparatively uniform in their results, notwith- 

 standing the very high preliminary temperatures 

 to which the vessels and their solutions had been 

 exposed, that they seemed to me adequate to 

 finally solve the much-debated question as to 

 the Origin of Life, upon which so many im- 

 portant biological as well as philosophical issues 

 depend. 



Naturally, therefore, and notwithstanding pre- 

 vious experiences, I desired to submit my results 

 to our premier scientific society the Royal So- 



