DR. BASTIAN'S EXPERIMENTS. 59 



other hand, these new experiments were as conclusive 

 as Dr. Bastian maintains, a priori arguments could 

 not make them more true, or in any way promote 

 their acceptance. If new experiments were really 

 needed, and no one doubts this, it would have been 

 better to have allowed them to rest upon their own 

 merits, and speak for themselves. 



Some of the experimental results are at variance 

 with those arrived by previous investigators, and are 

 very remarkable. It would not therefore be right 

 to offer an opinion upon them until the same experi- 

 ments have been carefully repeated. But it is not 

 possible to resist drawing this general inference from 

 the drawings and statements published in the latter 

 part of Dr. Bastian's memoir, viz., that a solution of 

 tartrate of ammonia and phosphate of soda boiled for 

 twenty minutes and kept in vacua y for from ten to thirty 

 days, is really as potent, or even more potent, as a 

 generator of life than many solutions of vegetable 

 matter which have been exposed for several days to 

 the atmosphere ! Indeed, several of Dr. Bastian's ex- 

 periments appear to me to prove too much, and until 

 they have been repeated and similar results obtained 

 by other observers, he must excuse me for postponing 

 for the present the acceptance of the statement that 

 such organisms as he has figured in Figs. 12, 13, 14, 

 15, and 17, have really been developed as he supposes. 



Unquestionably, if Dr. Bastian's observations should 

 prove unassailable, the new facts he has discovered 

 will be regarded as of the very highest importance ; 



