704 Chronicles of Science. | Oct., 
favourable for experiment as to the possibility of spontaneous gene- 
ration. M. Milne-Edwards, however, stated that M. Panceri had shown 
that the shell is not always impervious to the passage of organized 
bodies. 
The subject of spontaneous generation is still occupying consider- 
able attention both in France and England. Messrs. Pouchet, Joly, 
and Musset are endeavouring to prove by their experiments that the 
air does not normally contain the incalculable number of ova and 
spores ascribed to it by M. Pasteur. That shown, they engage to 
prove that with a boiled fermentable substance to be left to their 
choice, organized productions shall be constantly and universally ob- 
tained in vessels hermetically sealed, and containing a cubic decimeter 
of atmospheric air. The statement of M. Pasteur, on the other hand, 
is, that it is possible to obtain in a given place a sufficient but limited 
quantity of atmospheric air, having undergone no kind of physical or 
chemical alteration, capable, nevertheless, of causing an alteration in 
an eminently putrescible liquid. 
Dr. Child, of Oxford, has laid some experiments before the Royal 
Society, made during the summer of 18638, in which milk or fragments 
of meat and water were placed in bulbs of glass 24 inches in diameter 
—some of the bulbs being filled with air previously passed through a 
porcelain tube containing fragments of pumice-stone, and heated to 
vivid redness in a furnace; while others were filled respectively with 
carbonic acid, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen gases. Some of the 
substances were boiled from five to twenty minutes, in all cases in the 
bulb, and with the stream of gas or air still passing through. ‘The 
microscopic examination of the contents took place at various times 
from three to four months after their enclosure. When the substances 
had not been boiled, in every case but one, low organisms were found ; 
and when the substances were boiled the results were :—in the car- 
bonic acid and hydrogen experiments, no sign of life; in the heated 
air and oxygen experiments, organisms were found; and also in the 
nitrogen experiments where meat was used, but none where milk was 
used. It is worthy of remark that in these experiments organisms 
were found under the precise circumstances in which M. Pasteur states 
that they cannot and do not exist. 
M. Coste has laid before the French Academy some important 
observations on the development of ciliated Infusoria, which in many 
points oppose the doctrines of M. Pouchet. Infusoria, he affirms, 
make their appearance in an infusion long before the pellicle, falsely 
called stroma, a name which attributes a function to it that it does not 
possess. They are introduced either as eggs or cysts with the hay, 
moss, or leaves of which the infusion is made. Although the stroma 
is produced in infusions made with substances which are not exposed 
to the air, such as the pulp of the apple, infusoria are never found in 
such infusions if the vessel be covered with a piece of glass. Never- 
theless, if, after ten or twenty days, no infusorium be visible, and two 
or three Kolpods, or Chilodons, or Glaucomas be introduced, these 
species will soon show themselves in prodigious numbers, in conse- 
quence of their mode of immediate multiplication by division. Some, 
