24 
burned and destroyed as they entered, he allowed the air to have 
free access to the tube. Beef-iea kept in this manner was found at 
the expiration of some months to be perfectly sweet, but when the 
neck of the tube was broken off and boiling heat no longer main- 
tained, the liquid was quickly decomposed, and in twenty-four 
hours swarmed with bacterial life. Thus was demonstrated the 
fact that decomposition is due to the micro-organisms which throng 
the air, and not to any power of spontaneous generation in the 
liquid itself. 
Dr. Bastian, however maintained that by his experiments it 
was equally well proved that a decomposable fluid placed in 
sterilised tubes, boiled, and then hermetically sealed, was capable 
of setting up spontaneous generation. The balance of scientific 
opinion was, however against him, and M. Pasteur’s theory was 
fully confirmed by Professor Tyndall, who showed by many 
elaborate experiments that the most decomposable liquids, if first 
sterilised by boiling, and then effectually secluded from the air by 
cotton wool, would keep good for an indefinite period. He also 
demonstrated that if, after being boiled, they were simp'y kept at 
an extreme altitude, where the air is free from germs, they are 
equally proof against decomposition. 
These experiments are, to my mind, deeply interesting, for I 
confess I am one of those who cannot believe in the chemical 
origin of even the lowest forms of life. TI believe that even in the 
very humblest organism exists a vital power, not only different 
from, but, as we see in our own bodies, even opposed to chemical 
action. We may not be able to define this marvellous power, or to 
say in what it consists, but we see and feel its might, and our own 
minds recognise it as that breath of life which emanated from a 
supreme being. Life can never be a mere heterogeneous collection 
of atoms; there must be some guiding influence, directing each 
tiny particle to the place it is to fill in the grand and harmonious 
scheme of nature. Nothing in creation is more calculated to 
excite our emotions of wonder and awe than the knowledge that 
two tiny molecules of precisely similar appearance are destined, 
perhaps, to develop, the one into a sentient and immortal man 
with all his wonderful apparatus of ever beating heart, active and 
reflecting brain, and complex organisation, and the other into 
merely a simple lichen clinging to some weather beaten stone. 
M. Pasteur having identified the special fungus or yeast ferment 
which transforms brewers’ wort into beer, he was able readily to 
detect, by the aid of the microscope, the other germs which so 
frequently turned the beer sour, and spoiled the brewing. These 
injurious microbes with which the air of a brewery teems in conse- 
quence of the decomposable nature of many of the materials used, 
