398 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



For thirty years he had had the question under examination, and had 

 experimented on the subject. In these experiments he had assured himself 

 that organized matter heated to 120 or 130 C., with water artificially made 

 by means of hydrogen and oxide of copper, and with artificial air in closed 

 tubes, the glass of which had been recently heated to a red-heat, produced 

 neither vegetation nor animalcules. On opening these tubes, and allowing 

 ordinary air to enter, there was soon an appearance of vegetation and ani- 

 malcules. These results had surprised him, as he was disposed to think that 

 the germs of these plants and animalcules might be distributed in the organ- 

 ized matter as well as in the air itself, and that certain of these germs might 

 well be of a nature to resist a temperature of 100 C., or even a higher tem- 

 perature. 



As the Tardigrade?,* when absolutely dry, resist 140 C., and the sporules 

 of Oidium anrantiacum 100 C. in a moist medium, it will not suffice, in order 

 to establish the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, that living beings 

 should sometimes appear in boiling water, in contact with artificial air and 

 with the presence of organic matters that had before been heated, especially 

 if these matters were heated when dry. When, among these inferior animals 

 and plants, life is suspended by absolute desiccation to return to action 

 again on a return of humidity, the being so treated is in that state of latent 

 animation which belongs to germs. It is hence a matter of astonishment 

 that on putting heated organic matters into connection with oxygen and 

 artificial water, we do not sometimes find living beings to appear Even 

 such an observation as this would not therefore suffice to establish the 

 theory of spontaneous generation, or prove that the germs of these beings 

 were not previously deposited in the organic matters employed. But, in 

 fact, whilst animalcules appear when the ordinary air has access, without 

 this access, under the precautions mentioned, they do not appear. 



On the same occasion, M. Claude Bernard also made the following state- 

 ment : 



Among a large number of experiments which I haA r e made to ascertain the 

 influence of saccharine substances in liquids where microscopic vegetation 

 was developed, I will cite one, as it bears directly on this subject of sponta- 

 neous generation now under discussion. 



On the 1st of September, 1857, I put into two glass flasks, each half a 

 litre in capacity, about fifty cubic centimetres of a same dilute solution of 

 gelatine in water, to which some thousandths of cane-sugar had been added. 

 The liquid was then kept boiling in the two flasks for a quarter of an hour, 

 the tubular neck of each having been previously drawn out, so that it could 

 easily be scaled. Up to this point there was no difference between the flasks. 

 Now, when the flasks were still boiling, and filled with steam, a difference 

 was begun, by allowing ordinary air to enter one, and highly heated air the 

 other. To accomplish this, while ebullition was going on, the neck of one 

 of the flasks was connected with one of the extremities of a porcelain tube 

 filled with fragments of porcelain, and brought up to a red-heat by a 

 furnace; at the other extremity, the porcelain tube was terminated in a 

 glass tube of fine bore, so that the air should enter gradually, and pass very 

 slowly over the red-hot porcelain. Thus situated, the vapor of the liquid in 



* The Tardigrade animalcules, are minute, worm-shape animals, about a fortieth 

 of an inch in length, belonging to the Ilotatoria of Ehrenberg, and therefore much 

 higher in structure than the ordinary Infusoria. 



