PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 95 



a series of exquisitely accurate experiments on the antagonistic 

 action of the poison of the Calabar bean and atropia on each 

 other in the living subject. These poisons have no chemical and no 

 physical action on each other. Yet physiologically the one de- 

 stroys the destructive action of the other ; proving that vital action, 

 whatever be the cause of its difference, differs from mere che- 

 micro-physical action. To say that life and all its phenomena are 

 produced by mere chemistry and physics, is equal to saying that 

 when an ounce and a ton of gmrpowder are exploded by the same 

 spark, that the work done by the explosion was in each case done by 

 the spark. The spark merely determined — - set free — the working 

 power — chemical affinity ; and chemical and physical forces simply 

 excite or determine vital action. Even if Bastian's supposition be 

 true, that life was at first evolved from physical force, it does not 

 follow that it is so now. Because there has been one carboniferous 

 period on the globe, it does not follow that there must be another. 

 And to suppose that the lowly organisms we see must be physically 

 evolved, inasmuch as otherwise they would have taken by the laws of 

 evolution a higher grade in the scale of being, is to forget that there 

 are definite groups of animal forms almost as lowly as the Foramini- 

 fera that have remained the same through all geological epochs. To 

 talk of the monads as unstable is to know nothing about them. It 

 requires the patience of years, and powers from 1-16 to l-50th to 

 truly study them. He had worked out Bodo saltans after three years of 

 work with Powell and Lealand powers ; had traced it through seven 

 metamorphoses, but these were as constantly repeated asjthejnetanior- 

 phoses of the frog or the crab. There is no doubt that bacteria de- 

 velop where there is a comparative optical purity when nothing is 

 seen. But does it follow that they develop where nothing is ? Ferns 

 were fertilized a hundred years ago as they are now, in spite of our 

 inability to discover the process. The author had developed spores 

 by reagents where none were visible otherwise ; and the invisibility 

 of bacteria spores, or whatever else they might be called, was only 

 natural with our present powers of analysis. Where an experiment 

 was made by Bastian and Sanderson, it is not difficult to predicate 

 whose results the scientific world would sooner receive ; and in a 

 similar experiment the results of the former were positive, those of 

 the latter negative. It is easy to get positive results. Proof such as 

 true science should demand is wanting, that the issues of Dr. Bastian's 

 experiments with saline solutions were vital ; while the same want 

 of delicate manipulation which permitted a fragment of sphagnum to 

 enter a sealed tube, and to be discovered in Huxley's presence and 

 mistaken for a vital product of the infusion until the fallacy was dis- 

 pelled by Huxley,* would have allowed him to introduce the penicil- 

 lium, which is a common adherent to crystals of ammoniac tartar ate. 

 The assumption that prolonged boiling destroys the possibility of 

 life from germs Mr. Dallinger gave strong evidence for suspecting, 

 and wholly questioned the production of one form of life from the ova 

 or spore of another. He had often seen rotifers emerge from cells of 

 * ' Nature," vol. i., p. 475. 



