Minute Organisms. Ill 



jority of those "who have paid attention to the controversy or 

 engaged in experiments, will coincide -^th his statement that 

 "■with organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet 

 in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I 

 think it would he the height of presumption for any man to say 

 that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we 

 call 'vital' may not some day be artificially brought together. 

 All that I feel justified in afiirmuig is, that I see no reason for 

 believing that the fact has been performed yet." 



T3r. Bastian's experiments and statements have been the subject 

 of brisk controversy, and he cannot escape the charge of haste, and 

 in some cases want of sufficient care. Cautious experiments made 

 by others have shown that glass vessels are acted upon by such 

 solutions as he employed ; and Dr. Frankland describes in ' Xatui-e ' 

 (January 19th) glass splinters and spheroidal bodies, which he 

 says were evidently rounded particles of glass, obtained by exposing 

 carbonate of ammonia 15 grains, phosphate of soda 5 grains, dis- 

 tilled water 1 ounce, to a high temperature in tubes of hard Bohe- 

 mian glass. Dr. Frankland observes that the movement of certain 

 particles was evidently Brownian ; but without doubting that his 

 particles possessed no life, we may ask is that sort of motion any 

 proof of it ? "Would not living bodies, if small enough in proportion 

 to their specific gravity, be affected with this motion just as inor- 

 ganic bodies of the same weight, size, and form would be ? 



Theoretical conclusions such as those resulting from a consi- 

 deration of the Pangenesis hypothesis of Darwin, together with 

 inferences from a host of fects, lead us to believe that vital proper- _ 

 ties may exist in particles too small for microscopic investigation, 

 or even visibility. Dr. Pigott estimates the spherical error of what 

 we have considered fine objectives as the 1 — 50,000" ; and we have 

 glimpses of bodies less than that size which are ahve, and the struc- 

 tures of which must be far too minute for examination by any 

 instruments we can at present hope to possess. "We are liable not 

 only to be baffled by minuteness of size, but also by close approxi- 

 mations to homogeneity of structure, colour, and refractive power. 

 We want to see the ultimate molecular structure of bodies on which 

 dialytic and perhaps chemical actions depend, and we have no 

 means of doing it. The controversy between heterogenists and 

 other thinkers may thus elude all direct research, but it would, on all 

 grounds, be a mistake to discourage investigations, because they are 

 carried on in the hope of establishing conclusions that militate 

 against existing ideas, or theories that have been long accepted. 

 We must in our special pursuits avoid the method of reasoning 

 resorted to in old times by supporters of incorrect theories of 

 astronomy, and which is still occasionally used by men of some 

 pretensions to scientific knowledge. To put such reasoning in a 



