66 STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



rigorous, and the fact indisputable; for not only 

 had the fact been confirmed by the united experi- 

 ence of several investigators, it had stood the test 

 of very severe experiment. Thus, in 1842, M. Do- 

 yere published experiments which seemed to place 

 it beyond skepticism. Under the air-pump he set 

 some moss, together with vessels containing sul- 

 phuric acid, which would absorb every trace of 

 moisture. After leaving the moss thus for a week, 

 he removed it into an oven, the temperature of which 

 was raised to 300 Fahrenheit. Yet even this treat- 

 ment did not prevent the animals from resuscitating 

 when water was added. 



In presence of testimony like this, doubt will seem 

 next to impossible. Nevertheless, my own experi- 

 ments leave me no choice but to doubt. Not hav- 

 ing witnessed M. Doyere's experiment, I ani not 

 prepared to say wherein its fallacy lies ; but that 

 there is a fallacy seems to me capable of decisive 

 proof. In M. Pouchet's recent work* I first read a 

 distinct denial of the pretended resuscitation of the 

 Eotifers ; this denial was the more startling to me, 

 because I had myself often witnessed the reawaken- 

 ing of these dried animals. Nevertheless, whenev- 

 er a doubt is fairly started, we have not done jus- 

 tice to it until we have brought it to the test of ex- 

 periment; accordingly, I tested this, and quickly 

 came upon what seems to me the source of the gen- 



* POUCHET : Heterogenie, ou Traite de la Generation Spontanee, 

 1859, p. 453. 



