80 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



with a high temperature and hermetically-sealed 

 vessels. I accordingly went to King's College; 

 and, having none of the ordinary tubes at hand, 

 four thick test-tubes were drawn out charged with 

 some of the same kind of solution as before, care- 

 fully sealed, and then heated in a bath of colza 

 oil, with the intention of exposing them to 130 C. 

 for 10"; but the temperature went up to 132, and 

 two minutes after it had reached that point two 

 very loud explosions occurred. The heating was 

 therefore stopped at once, and it was subsequently 

 found that the bottoms of two of the test-tubes 

 had been blown off, though the other two were 

 intact. 1 



One of these tubes was, on June 28th, placed on 

 the north balcony, and the other at the south win- 

 dow, in order to get further evidence as to the 

 relative advantage of the two modes of exposure. 

 After only a little more than four weeks that is, 

 on August 1st, both tubes were opened and their 

 contents examined with the aid of the centrifuge, 

 as there was only a very scanty deposit in each 

 of them. In the tube which had been at the south 



1 Accidents of this kind seem never to occur with the soft 

 soda glass. The harder glass of the test-tubes is more like 

 the uviol glass with which I had several such accidents in 1906. 



