Ki PKOCEEDIKGS OF THE 



connect recent with geologically ancient races of both animals and 

 plants, without, however, making any one move of importance to- 

 wards the solution of the problems before us; and we are still 

 anxiously awaiting from Mr. Darwin himself that long-promised 

 second portion of his great digest which is to treat of the variations 

 of undomesticated animals and plants. 



Spontaneous Generation has perhaps been of late the subject of 

 more controversy in this country than abroad. Since Prof. Huxley, 

 followed by Dr. Tyndall, placed the matter in so clear a light at the 

 Liverpool Meeting of 1870, Dr. Bastian has returned to the charge. 

 In his work entitled ' The Modes of origin of lowest Organisms,' he 

 has published an account of numerous experiments further illus- 

 trating his views in opposition to those of Huxley and Tyndall, and 

 confirming, in his mind, the theory of Archebiosis, the name he 

 gives to what is commonly called Spontaneous Generation. On the 

 other hand, Mr. N. Hartley has communicated to the Eoyal Society 

 (' Proceedings,' xx. No. 132) his experiments concerning the evolu- 

 tion of life from lifeless matter, which appear to have been con- 

 ducted with great care, and in some measure under the guidance of 

 Dr. Odling and Prof. TjTidaU. From these he concludes that " so far 

 as our present knowledge guides us, whether we term it sponta- 

 neous generation, abiogenesis, or archebiosis, the process by which 

 living things spring from lifeless matter must be said to be only 

 ideal." The same number of these ' Proceedings ' contains abstracts 

 of three papers by Dr. Grace Calvert on the development of proto- 

 plasmic life, its influence on putrefaction, and the effect of various 

 substances in promoting or arresting its progress, all of which papers 

 are connected with, and in continuation of, his former experiments 

 and conclusions tending to support the theory that this protoplasmic 

 life is derived from invisible germs floating in the atmosphere. 

 Dr. Bastian, at a later meeting of the Royal Society, again returned 

 to the subject in a paper entitled " On some Heterogenetic modes of 

 origin of flagellated Monads, Fungus-germs, and ciliated Infusoria," 

 inserted at length in No. 133 of the ' Proceedings.' The experi- 

 ments and observations here detailed are very interesting as to the 

 development of these organisms in the pellicle that forms on in- 

 fusions of organic matter when exposed to the atmosphere ; but they 

 do not affect the question of the origin of the living components of 

 the pellicle itself, which he considers to have been fully proved by 

 his own former papers, as well as by the well-known experiments of 

 Pouchet and others, to have been evolved from lifeless matter by 

 archebiosis. A more extended work, giving the fullest details of 



