PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS IX 



that the story of Samson, the young lion and the swarm of bees 

 and honey found in the lion's carcase, were divine proofs of 

 spontaneous generation. You remember Samson's riddle, " Out 

 of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth 

 sweetness." 



For long, aye, until quite recently, scientists were divided. 

 There were the Biogenetics, or those who asserted that all life 

 was due to pre-existing life, 



" Omne vivum e vivo " ; 

 and the Abiogenetics, who believed that under certain conditions 

 life could arise dc uoru — in other words, spontaneously. 



This controversy waged from the days of Leeuwenhoeck, 

 and although the ])S held the poAver, for they had the heavier 

 'battalions, yet the As managed to successfully carry on a guerilla 

 war until about 1875, when various workers, chief amongst 

 whom was Tyndall, settled the matter definitely to the complete 

 overthrow of the theory of spontaneous generation. A full 

 account of his experiments — having reference to putrefaction and 

 infection — with some twentv-six different kinds of animal and 

 vegetable infusions, and the appliances '^' he made use of, will be 

 found in his " Floating Matter in the Air," a book I can 

 confidently recommend to your notice, for it is clearly, cleverly, 

 and popularly written. 



We may fairly assume then, that life, as it is at present 

 known — from the hugest of beasts to the tiniest of cocci — runs 

 far back into prehistoric ages. 



But these cocci and other micro-organisms were first viewed 

 by man some 225 years ago, when, in 1675, Anton Leeuwenhoeck, 

 a Dutch philosopher, not only made his own microscope — a 

 simple one — grinding and polishing its lenses, but used it to 

 such good purpose that he discovered and described certain 

 minute living entities, which are now known as bacteria, 

 bacilli, spirilla, and micro-cocci. He classified these as animal- 

 culae, but he formulated no theory as to the part they played 

 in the vast orchestra of Nature. Other observers followed, but 

 it was not until 1837, the year of our late beloved Queen's acces- 

 sion, that Schwann, the author of the cell theory, asserted that 

 fermentative processes were dependent upon the proliferation of 

 certain yeast plants, and that putrefaction was due " to some- 

 thing suspended in the air which heat was able to destroy." In 

 1863, Davaine demonstrated that anthrax, malignant pustule or 

 woolsorter's disease, was due to the presence in the blood of the 

 sufferer of a specific infective organism, the now well-known 



