312 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



life in it, and, by a most ingenious contrivance, he 

 managed to break it open and introduce such a ball 

 of gun cotton, without allowing the infusion or the 

 cotton ball to come into contact with any air but 

 that which had been subjected to a red heat, and in 

 twenty-four hours he had the satisfaction of finding 

 all the indications of what had been hitherto called 

 spontaneous generation. He had succeeded in 

 catching the germs, and developing organisms in the 

 way he had anticipated. 



"It now struck him that the truth of his con- 

 clusions might be demonstrated without all the 

 apparatus he had employed. To do this he took 

 some decaying animal or vegetable substance, such 

 as urine, which is an extremely decomposable sub- 

 stance, or the juice of yeast, or perhaps some other 

 artificial preparation, and filled a vessel, having a 

 long tubular neck, with it. He then boiled the liquid 

 and bent that long neck into an S shape, or zigzag, 

 leaving it open at the end. The infusion then gave 

 no trace of any appearance of spontaneous genera- 

 tion, however long it might be left, as all the germs 

 in the air were deposited in the beginning of the 

 bent neck. He then cut the tube close to the vessel, 

 and allowed the ordinary air to have free and direct 

 access ; and the result of that was the appearance 

 of organisms in it, as soon as the infusion had been 

 allowed to stand long enough to allow of the growth 

 of those it received from the air, which was about 

 forty-eight hours. The result of M. Pasteur's experi- 

 ments proved, therefore, in the most conclusive 

 manner, that all the appearances of spontaneous 



