361 



information. Finding, however, as I did, the suhject in a 

 most unsatisfactory state, and that nothing was definitely- 

 known, I set to work for myself. If it is true that Torula 

 forms. Bacteria forms, and such things which are common 

 products of so-called spontaneous generation — if these can be 

 shown to he terms in the development of a known form — the 

 probability of the same identical form turning up sponta- 

 neously becomes by mathematical considerations infinitely 

 minute ; and for my part I could as soon believe that the calf 

 I see grazing in a meadow, had been spontaneously generated 

 from the grass and flowers there. In the second place, the 

 discrimination of the modes of movement of bacteria is im- 

 portant. Thirdly, the development of living matter from 

 mineral matter without the influence of light which I have 

 mentioned above is of the highest importance. In relation to 

 the life of the deep sea organisms it is important. We have had 

 all sorts of speculations as to their life in the dark, my own 

 included.^ The mystery of Bathybius is paralleled by the 

 protoplasmic material of Penicillium which develops in the 

 dark in the same way as it does ; just also as Penicillium 

 turns ammoniacal salts in the dark into protoplasm, so may 

 Bathybius do the same at the bottom of the sea, and so we 

 need not trouble ourselves with any special hypothesis to 

 account for the occurrence of a sheet of living matter in this 

 position. 



[After some discussion, Professor Huxley added, that he 

 never had seen the true vital movements of Bacteria after 

 they had been boiled. He admitted there were flaws in 

 Pasteur's work on account of his having used only low 

 powers of the microscope. The divergence between his 

 (Professor Huxley's) views and that of abiogenists was 

 merely one of time. As a believer in the doctrine of evo- 

 lution in its most extreme form, he believed that organic 

 matter had at one time developed from mineral matter, 

 but that was no reason why it should do so in the cases 

 cited by abiogenists. He considered that all attempts 

 at what the German's call " rein-cultur " must be aban- 

 doned in working at the development of Bacteria, since 

 it was impossible to obtain an optically pure specimen of 

 water. He had never found a drop of water in which he 

 could vouch for the absence of any particles the T-oi^oth of 

 an inch in diameter, and it was particles of this size, the 

 microzymes of some writers, which are the first appearance 

 of Bacterium. If, as he mentioned in his inaugural address, 

 you take an infusion of hay, and examine it at once, you find 

 ' See tills Journal, October, 1868. 



