3.1 2 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



discussion has taken place as to the means of closing 

 the flasks, concerning the degree of heat which it is 

 necessary to employ, and also as to whether the 

 organisms that have been found in such experiments 

 have been living or dead but, amidst all varieties of 

 opinion with regard to the several details, there has 

 been a general agreement that the question was only 

 to be settled in some such manner. 



The question as to the limits of what M. Pouchet 

 terms c vital resistance' to heat is that which has 

 excited the greatest share of attention, and is the one 

 which is of most fundamental importance in this 

 enquiry ] . 



In spite of the very definite results, however, of ex- 

 periments carried on with the view of throwing light 

 upon the subject, it is one upon which the opponents 

 of c spontaneous generation ' are most reluctant to 

 come to any decision. They seem ever ready to re- 

 pudiate the validity of the results at which they had 

 previously arrived, as soon as experiments are published 

 tending to show that these results being correct or- 

 ganisms are undoubtedly capable of arising de novo. 



perusal of Prof. Huxley's Inaugural Address before the British As- 

 sociation in 1870, which was destined to enlighten the public on this 

 question. 



1 One of the latest writers on this subject, Professor Wyman, of 

 Cambridge, U. S., says : ' The issue between the advocates and the 

 opponents of the doctrine in question, clearly turns on the extent to 

 which it can be proved that living beings resist the action of water at a 

 high temperature.' American Journal of Science and Art, Sept. 1867. 



