Monthly Mi ical 
326 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. sOurnal, Deo. 2, 1870. 
Qurxetr Microscorican CLus. 
At the meeting of the Quekett Club on the 23rd September, 1870, 
Dr. L. Beale, F.R.S., in the chair, four new members were elected, a 
number of presents to the library were announced, and thirty slides 
were presented to the cabinet. A paper was read “On so-called 
Spontaneous Generation,” by Benjamin T’. Lowne, M.R.C.S.Eng., &c. 
The following is an abstract of this paper, which occupied an hour 
in reading. Mr. Lowne commenced by saying :— 
When I announced a month ago that I would read you a paper 
on “ Spontaneous Generation,” I had no idea that one of the greatest 
living naturalists was going to give a most able résumé on the subject, 
or perhaps I should have hesitated in coming before you. Neverthe- 
less I feel it is a matter for congratulation that I did so, as many 
unanswered questions have arisen since Professor Huxley delivered 
his able address at Liverpool. 
Two hundred and two years, ago Francesco Redi successfully com- 
bated the then prevalent doctrine of spontaneous generation by the 
most simple, nay, almost childlike experiments, such as putting meat 
under fine gauze, and so showing that, maggots are not spontaneously ° 
generated. Since that day the tendency of experiments has certainly 
been in favour of Redi’s aphorism, “ Omne vivum e vivo.” 
The question, however, all turns upon that, little word omune, all ; 
whether all living things originate from germs, or whether some may 
originate spontaneously from not living matter. 
Now, there can be no doubt but that there was a first cell and a 
first organism which had no progenitor. Professor Huxley said last 
week, that although he could not believe anything in the absence of 
evidence upon the subject, that “expectation is permissible where 
belief is not;” and that if it were given him “to look beyond the 
abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period 
when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, 
which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy,” he 
“ should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm 
from not living matter.” 
To show you that I am not biassed in this matter, and that I am 
no partisan, I tell you I go farther in my expectation than Professor 
Huxley, and I think that if we could produce the conditions we might 
see amcebiform protoplasm originating even yet from inorganic matter. 
Perhaps, as Dr. Bastian suggests, colloid may be intermediate between 
inorganic and organic living material, but I tell you, gentlemen, this 
is all expectation, and should not be belief, as we have not at present 
a tittle of evidence in its favour. No doubt, with Mr. Charles Darwin’s 
hypothesis, the origin of living organic matter from inorganic matter 
would supply a gap in the evolution of the animal kingdom, but we 
must not on that account found a scientific belief. 
Now, gentlemen, I shall very carefully sift the supposed evidence 
in favour of spontaneous generation ; I shall divide this evidence into 
that which is purely microscopic and that which is dependent on 
experiment. 
