SPONTANEO US a KNEE A TION. 591 



been issued to panspermatists 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 

 pernicious 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 mat- 

 ter whether this matter be of high or of low organiza- 

 tion." f Again, at another place: " It has been shown that 

 the briefest exposure to the influence of boiling water is 

 destructive of all living matter." J 



The experiments already recorded plainly show that 

 there is a marked difference between the dry bacterial 

 matter of the air, and the wet, soft, and active bacteria of 

 putrefying organic liquids. The one can be luxuriantly 

 bred in the saline solution, the others refuse to be born 

 there, while both of them are copiously developed in a 

 sterilized turnip infusion. Inferences, as we have already 

 seen, founded on the deportment of the one liquid cannot 

 with the warrant of scientific logic be extended to the 

 other. But this is exactly what the heterogenist has done, 

 thus repeating as regards the death-point of bacteria the 

 error into which he fell concerning the germs of the air. 

 Let us boil our muddy mineral solution with its swarming 

 bacteria for five minutes. In the soft succulent condition 

 in which they exist in the solution not one of them escapes 

 destruction. The same is true of the turnip infusion 

 if it be inoculated with the living bacteria only the 

 aerial dust being carefully excluded. In both cases the 



*Bastian, " Evolution," p. 133 

 \lUd., p. 135, 

 ., p. 46. 



