SP OXTAXEO US GEXERA TIOX. 



441 



staplers of Elbceuf, and Pouehet had published 

 the fact in the Comptes Hindus of the Paris Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, that the desiccated seeds of the 

 Brazilian plant medkago survived fully four hours' 

 boiling. ... So much for the heterogenist's mis- 

 take in regard to ordinary seeds." 



Now mv readers will be surprised to learn that 

 this particular example, which is to invalidate my 

 statements, had been discussed by me, in 1872, in 

 my "Beginnings of Life "(vol L, p. 314), as may 

 be seen from the following quotation : 



" Seeds of higher plants, provided with a hard 

 coat, may — especially after prolonged periods of 

 desiccation— germinate even after they have been 

 boiled for a long time in water. This was ascer- 

 tained by AT. Pouehet to be the case with an 

 American species of medicago. Some of the seeds 

 were completely disorganized by this boiling tem- 

 perature, while a few remained intact, and it was 

 these latter which were afterward found to germi- 

 nate. They had been protected from the influence 

 of the hot water by their very dry and hardened 

 coats. On this subject Prof. Jeffries Wyman says : 

 ' Water penetrates the seeds of many plants, and 

 especially of some of the Zeguminosce, very slow- 

 ly; in the case of Gleditschia and Laburnum we 

 have found several days and even weeks necessary 

 for the penetration of cold water, though when the 

 water is hot it penetrates much more readily. If, 

 therefore, the seeds are dry when immersed, and 

 are boiled for a few minutes only, they may still 

 germinate. If they are moistened beforehand, the 

 action of boiling water has been found uniformly 

 fatal.' . . . All the organisms in which we are 

 interested at present, however, have no such pro- 

 tection. These are mere specks or masses of pro- 

 toplasm, which are either naked or provided only 

 with thin coverings." 



Thus it will be seen that the facts newly dis- 

 covered by Prof. Tyndall, which were to invali- 

 date my views, were with others nearly five years 

 ago referred to by me — and their value was, I 

 trust, duly estimated. But upon this subject I 

 must notice another instance in which Prof. Tyn- 

 dall has misinformed the public in regard to my 

 mode of dealing with these questions. At page 

 43 of the last number of this Review, he says, 

 " Throughout his long disquisitions on this sub- 

 ject, Dr. Bastian makes special kinds of living 

 matter do duty for all kinds." But the real fact 

 is wholly different, since my reference to the ques- 

 tion of the power of resisting unaccustomed heat 

 which is possessed by living matter had included 

 a reference to all the forms of it with which 

 experiment had been made (so far as I had been 

 able to ascertain) up to the date of my last con- 



tribution to this subject, in 1S74. 

 were thus summarized : ' 



These inquiries 



TEMPERATURES AT WHICH DEATH OCCURS. 



Are killed at 



Simple aquatic organisms (Spallan- 



sani, Max Schultze, and Kuhne). 104°-113° F. 



Tissue-elements of cold-blooded ani 



mal — frog (Kuhne) . . . 104° 



Tissue-elements of warm-blooded ani- 

 mal — man (Strieker and Kuhne) 111° 



Tissue - elements of plants— Urtica, 

 Tradescantia, and Vallisneria 

 (Max Schultze and Kuhne) . 116i°-llSi° 



Eggs, fungus-spores, and bacteria- 

 germs (Spallanzani, Ziebig, Tar- 

 nowski, and others) . . . 122°-140° 



In respect to such results of independent 

 investigation I made the following comments : 

 "We have only to bear in mind two or three 

 general principles in order to be able to har- 

 monize the several experimental results arrived 

 at with the now very generally admitted doctrine 

 as to the oneness or generic resemblance existing 

 between all forms of living matter. We must 

 bear in mind, first of all, the consideration en- 

 forced by Spallanzani, that there are different 

 grades of vitality, or, in other words, different 

 kinds of living matter, exhibiting more or less 

 of the phenomena known as vital ; and that of 

 these kinds those which would exhibit the most 

 active life are those which would be most easily 

 killed by heat. Thus we should expect the latent 

 life of the germ, egg, or seed, to be less easily 

 extinguished than the more subtile and, at the 

 same time, more active life of the fully-developed 

 tissue-element or organism ; and we should also 

 expect that the vegetal element or organism 

 would, as a rule, be less readily killed than the 

 more highly-vitalized animal organism. These 

 principles, based upon the relative complexity of 

 life, are, however, subject to the influence of a 

 disturbing cause. . . . Custom or habitual con- 

 ditions may tend to render the more active tissue- 

 elements of warm-blooded animals better able to 

 resist the influence of heat than similar elements 

 of less highly-vitalized cold-blooded animals." 



These considerations I have thought it best 

 to quote, partly because they throw light upon 

 the independent results above tabulated, and 

 partly because they illustrate the degree of truth 

 contained in another of Prof. Tyndall's state- 

 ments concerning facts or views which I have 

 adduced. But even if I had, as he says, made 



1 " Evolution and the Origin of Life," p. 166. 



