176 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



obtained by the use of liquid air in a vacuum-jacketed 

 flask (like the well-known " thermos " flasks), into which 

 the seeds were introduced in thin glass tubes. Professor 

 M'Kendrick had previously shown that the putrescence 

 of meat, blood and milk by bacteria infesting them was 

 temporarily arrested, but not permanently so, by expos- 

 ing those substances for one hour to a temperature of 

 182 degrees below zero centigrade. It appeared that 

 the putrefactive bacteria present in those substances were 

 not destroyed by that degree of cold, but returned to 

 a state of activity when the normal temperature was 

 restored. Professor M'Kendrick also showed that seeds 

 would germinate after exposure to like treatment. 



All this is ancient history, twenty years and more in 

 the past. The experiments of a French observer, men- 

 tioned at the beginning of this chapter as foolishly 

 trumpeted in a London paper, were of service as con- 

 firming the extensive and careful work of his predecessors. 

 It is only when our old well-bottled discoveries have, 

 however tardily, been brought before the Paris Academy 

 of Sciences and sent back to us by the Paris correspondents 

 of news agencies as " startling novelties " and " amazing 

 discoveries" (twenty years old), that any attempt is made 

 to mention them in the London daily Press. And then 

 they are announced without any reference to their true 

 history. This habit of culling stale morsels of information 

 from the proceedings of foreign academies points to the 

 fact that there is incompetence both in the purveyor and 

 publisher of such scraps. If our newspaper editors must 

 publish scraps about scientific novelties, they should 

 employ educated assistants to see that they do not 

 make themselves ridiculous. The scraps which come 

 round to our newspapers from Paris are usually plagiarized 

 from a French newspaper by some one who has a very 

 imperfect knowledge of the subject to which they refer, 



