THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 1 7 



had been admitted to the boiled fluids, the different 

 results seemed to show that fermentation or non- 

 fermentation, in such cases^ depends wholly upon the 

 quality of the fluids employed. 



Other evidence which is so much vaunted by M. 

 Pasteur and his supporters, as to the possibility of 

 inducing fertility in previously sterile flasks by the 

 addition of a portion of asbestos, containing the solid 

 particles filtered from the atmosphere 1, is also equally 

 valueless for confirming the proposition that fermenta- 

 tion is only capable of being initiated by living fer- 

 ments. The same asbestos which may contain living 

 germs or organisms, does undoubtedly contain many de- 

 composable particles and fragments of organic matter 2. 

 The previously barren solution may therefore be ren- 

 dered fertile by the mere addition of those portions 

 of unstable organic matter, whose molecular mobility 

 has not been wholly impaired by the agency of heat, 

 so that they are still capable of initiating fermenta- 

 tive changes. This view is strengthened, as M. Pouchet 

 has pointed out, by the fact that in these cases, instead 

 of meeting some of the 'various kinds of organisms which 

 are considered to have representatives in the air^ and 

 whose spores or ova may be supposed to have been 

 sown, it is often merely Bacteria which are encountered. 

 And these differ in no respect from those that may pre- 

 sent themselves in a somewhat similar infusion, which 



^ Loc. cit., p. 40. 

 ' 2 See M. Pouchet's ' Nouvelles Experiences,' 1863, pp. 94-107. 



VOL. ir. c 



