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is the tendency of Pasteur's work to show that without 

 such external action and without life a few given forms 

 must have remained for ever unchanged. We have long 

 been familiar with the notion that life alone can build up 

 organic combinations. The vegetable takes up the inorganic 

 element and elaborates it into food for the more complex 

 tissues of the animal; Pasteur's teaching brings us to the 

 conclusion that for the reverse process life is still necessary. 

 Without the action of micro-organisms, dead organic matter 

 would accumulate and be at least as permanent as the 

 rocks. Pasteur's researches tend to banish from the universe 

 such a process as purely chemical decay. It is the function 

 of anaerobies to split up organic tissues into simpler com- 

 binations, and we are indebted to the aerobics for the 

 resolution of these simpler combinations into inorganic 

 forms. It seems almost as though chemical affinity acted 

 under the direction and control of life, and the fact that 

 man in the laboratory is able to produce artificial compounds 

 can scarcely be regarded as an exception to this rule. The 

 opinions based on Pasteur's suggestion in 1862, that the 

 production of nitrates in the soil is the work of a living 

 organism, have been much strengthened and extended by 

 such papers as that by Mr. R, Warington, on the value of 

 microbes to the agriculturist, read at the meeting of the 

 Brit. Assn., at Southport, last year. Not less remarkable 

 is Dr. Angus Smith's discovery of the giving off of hydrogen 

 from water as a consequence of the presence of microbes, 

 and as constituting even a test of their activity. A brief 

 r^sum4 of Dr. Smith's observations on this point appeared 

 in the Manchester Guardian, of January 28. Dr. Smith's 

 own account, which will form part of his forthcoming report 

 as Inspector under the Rivers Pollution Commission, will 

 be looked forward to with the greatest interest, and all will 

 anticipate with keen expectation Dr. Smith's further 

 researches based on a discovery which seems so full of 



