314 THE FLOATING-MATTER OF THE AIR. 



portion of that atmosphere in contact with the juice 

 shall be visibly free from floating dust, while three days'" 

 exposure to that dust fills it with bacteria ? ' Am I 

 over-sanguine in hoping that as regards the argument 

 here set forth he who runs may read, and he who reads 

 may understand ? 



We now proceed to the calm and thorough con- 

 sideration of another subject, more important if pos- 

 sible than the foregoing one, but like it somewhat 

 difficult to seize by reason of the very opulence of the 

 phraseology, logical and rhetorical, in which it has been 

 set forth. The subject now to be considered relates to- 

 what has been called ' the death-point of bacteria.* 

 Those who happen to be acquainted with the modern 

 English literature of the question will remember how 

 challenge after challenge has been issued to pansperm- 

 atists in general, and to one or two home workers in 

 particular, to come to close quarters on this cardinal 

 point. It is obviously the stronghold of the English 

 heterogenist. ' Water,' he says, ' is boiling merrily 

 over a fire when some luckless person upsets the vessel 

 so that the heated fluid exercises its scathing influence 

 upon an uncovered portion of the body — hand, arm, or 

 face. Here, at all events, there is no room for doubt. 

 Boiling water unquestionably exercises a most per- 

 nicious and rapidly destructive effect upon the living 

 matter of which we are composed.'^ And lest it should 

 be supposed that it is the high organization which, 

 in this case, renders the body susceptible to heat, he 

 refers to the action of boiling water on the hen's egg- 

 to dissipate the notion. ' The conclusion,' he says, 

 ' would seem to force itself upon us that there is 

 something intrinsically deleterious in the action of 

 boiling water upon living matter — whether this matter 

 be of high or of low organisation.' ^ Again, at another 

 1 Bastian, ' Evolution.' p. 138. - Ibid. p. 13.5. 



