THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



has compelled us to arrive, it remains for me to show, 

 how the facts, to which M. Pasteur and others call 

 attention in support of the atmospheric 'germ theory,' 

 are capable of quite a different interpretation j and how 

 (in the presence of new facts) the initiation of fer- 

 mentative processes is even more explicable from a 

 point of view which they almost utterly neglect, than 

 it is from their own standpoint. M. Pasteur's celebrated 

 experiments with fermentable fluids which had been 

 boiled in flasks with long, narrow, and bent necks; 

 those where the fluids were exposed to the air of 

 various localities ; and those in which previously sterile 

 fluids had been rendered fertile by an inoculation with 

 atmospheric particles — all these, so far from being con- 

 clusively in favour of his own doctrines, are even much 

 more explicable in accordance with the wider doctrines 

 concerning fermentation held by Baron Liebig. 



Two considerations — both of them almost ignored 

 by M. Pasteur and his followers — require to be con- 

 tinually borne in mind in interpreting the results of 

 any experiments bearing upon the cause of fermentation 

 and upon the possibility of the de novo origination of 

 organisms. They are these : — 



I. That dust filtered from the atmosphere has not 

 been proved to contain living Bacteria^ though it 

 is well known to contain a multitude of organic 

 particles, which, in accordance with Liebig's 

 hypothesis, are capable of acting as ferments in 

 the presence of water. 



