THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



2,, That, in accordance with the views of evolution- 

 ists, 'life' may be considered to represent the 

 sum-total of properties displayed by certain kinds 

 of organic matter ; and that these higher proper- 

 ties may be deteriorated or rendered non-existent 

 by an amount of heat which may not be adequate 

 wholly to decompose the organic matter itself. 



The first is a very important consideration. It should 

 be clearly understood, that even if we could demon- 

 strate the presence of Bacteria in the atmosphere, this 

 alone would not be enough. The panspermatists ought 

 to be able to demonstrate the existence of universally 

 disseminated living Bacteria, and therefore they may be 

 fairly asked to show — what as yet they have never 

 attempted — that Bacteria are well capable of resisting 

 such an amount of desiccation as must be involved by 

 their presence for an indefinite time in the atmosphere 

 even of the hottest and driest regions of the earth. For 

 organic substances in solution do not only putrefy in 

 moist weather or moist climates ; they putrefy, on the 

 contrary, most rapidly and surely when the temperature 

 is high, and quite irrespectively of the amount of 

 moisture contained in the atmosphere. The capability 

 of resisting the effects of desiccation — the possession 

 of which, by Bacteria^ is so necessary for the truth of 

 M. Pasteur's argument — ought to have been shown by 

 scientific evidence to be a real attribute of such organ- 

 isms j though it seems, on the contrary, to have been 



B 2, 



