1864. | Samuutson on the Source of Living Organisms. 605 
but mention is made also of “colpoda-like bodies, having ciliary 
motion.” 
Still more recently, too, a trustworthy observer at Oxford, Dr. 
Gilbert W. Child, communicated to the Royal Society the account of 
a series of experiments, twenty in number, performed with various 
infusions and a great variety of gases; and although the author 
modestly states that no definite conclusion can be drawn from so 
limited a range of experiments, “it is worthy of remark,” he says, 
* that organisms were found here under the precise circumstances in 
which M. Pasteur states that they cannot and do not exist ;” and, he 
adds, that “the very abnormal conditions under which some of these 
so-called organisms are found, would render it doubtful whether 
bacteriums, vibrios, &c., ought to be considered as independent organ- 
isms in any higher sense than are white blood-corpuscles, pollen- 
grains, mucus-corpuscles, or spermatozoa,’”* 
Due allowance being made for the brevity necessitated by the 
limited space at my command, I believe that my readers have had 
presented to them a faithful and unbiassed review of this controversy 
concerning the origin or derivation of living organisms. 
A large amount of feeling has been imported into the discussion, 
especially amongst our esteemed neighbours across the Channel (who, 
it is right to add, have done the most effective work), and that is one 
reason why I refrain from commenting upon the evidence of each 
investigator.f One circumstance must, however, have struck all who 
* «Proceedings of the Royal Society,’ vol. xiii. No, 65: “Experimental Re- 
searches on Spontaneous Generation.” 
t+ Since the present article was completed, I have read, and recommend for 
perusal, an able review of the Pouchet-Pasteur controversy, which appeared in 
the July number (1864) of the ‘ Medico-Chirurgical Review ’ (“ Recent Researches 
on the Production of Infusoria ”’), 
Although the writer leans to the doctrine of heterogenesis, he has given a 
very impartial account of the controversy, and has narrated many detailed experi- 
ments which my limited space bas compelled me to pass unnoticed, 
There are, however, two points which it appears to me that the writer has 
not well considered in his essay. In the first place, he speaks of the formation 
of “spontaneous eggs,” the production of which has been observed by Dr. Pouchet, 
and says that “this observation has not been controverted by the opponents of 
spontaneous generation ;” and, secondly, he believes that the work and opinions 
of Dr. Pouchet, the champion of “ heterogenesis,” deserve more consideration than 
they have received here and abroad. 
As regards the first, I would remind him that in another portion of his 
essay (p. 105) he tells us that the germsin dispute are incapable of being brought 
to the test of our senses; how their formation can have been observed is there- 
fore somewhat mysterious. And this leads to the inquiry whether Pouchet’s 
published observations have been such as to inspire confidence in their trust- 
worthiness: I fear not. This is not the first controversy concerning the 
nature of the infusoria in which Dr. Pouchet has taken a prominent part ; 
for when, some sixteen years since, the discussion between the veteran micro- 
seopist Ehrenberg and Dujardin was at its height, as to whether the so-called 
polygastrica possessed a series of distinct stomachs connected together by an 
intestine (as affirmed by Ehrenberg), or whether, according to Dujardin, these 
so-called stomachs were only “ vesicles” or “ vacuoles” temporarily formed in the 
protoplasm, and completely disconnected from one another, Dr. Pouchet stepped 
in between them, and with as much gravity as he now manifests in the contro- 
versy on “spontaneous generation,” proceeded to decide the debate. The great 
VOL, I. 27 
