DOs Lies | PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 251 
on a paper read at the British Association by Mr. Tichborne, F.C.S., 
made some useful remarks which we trust some of our readers will 
consider :— Dr. Angus Smith said the action of one decomposing body 
on another had been clearly explained by Liebig, although very curi- 
ously he only expressed what others had in somewhat different language 
said two centuries before. The matter since Liebig’s time had taken 
another form, and the action of decomposing organic substances had 
been considered less important than the action of what might be’called 
organized substances. This position Liebig objected to very much, 
but the researches of other chemists had proved that such was the case. 
It was very possible that both of the actions might go on in nature, 
for nature was a very wide field. He did not understand from Mr. 
Tichborne what kind of fermentation was induced. An infinite num- 
ber of actions might take place from variety in the dust. We might 
imagine a cholera germ, if there was such a thing, to produce an 
analogous cholera fermentation. Why should not such germs in 
travelling about introduce cholera into particular organic bodies, the 
inorganic substances in filth first receiving it? <A filth spot might be 
said to take the disease and transfer it to human beings. The most 
important inquiry now was to find out what quality of fermentation 
took place, when certain qualities of germ were used. This was the 
heart and marrow of the question for the future. 
Spontaneous Generation Defended.i—We are glad to be able to say 
that at the last day’s meeting of the British Association the subject of 
“ Spontaneous Generation” received a defence from Dr. Bastian, F.R.S. 
We cannot give Dr. Bastian’s views as fully as we could wish, but we 
may do more in this direction in our next number. Professor Huxley, 
in his inaugural address, referring to these experiments, said, the first 
reply which suggested itself was the probability that there must be 
some error about them, because they were performed every day on an 
enormous scale with quite contrary results—meat, fruits and vegetables, 
the very materials of the most fermentable and putrescible infusions, 
being preserved to the extent of thousands of tons every year by a 
method which was a mere application of Spallanzani’s experiment. 
Did the Professor, Dr. Bastian asked, presume that these preserved 
meats were free from living organisms? The ordinary method of pre- 
serving meat in cans, as practised at Mr. M:Call’s establishment in 
London, was this: Large numbers of the cans containing meat, and 
having only a small aperture in the top, were placed in a bath con- 
taining a solution of chloride of calcium capable of being heated to 
263° or 264° Fahr. before it boiled, and they were submitted for more 
than an hour and a half to a heat of 230° Fahr., corresponding with 
110° Cent., a temperature which Pasteur always considered sufticient 
to destroy any pre-existing life which might be in solution. Afterwards, 
the tins having been hermetically sealed, the temperature was rapidly 
raised to 260° Fahr., equivalent to 126° Cent., and this temperature 
was maintained for half an hour. Mr. M‘Call assured him that there 
was a certain definite percentage of failures in meat so preserved. 
Some of these were undoubtedly to be explained by defective closure 
