
I1O THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
question of interpretation, it is unnecessary to speak of 
them now—especially as most of the points referred 
to will have to be dealt with in subsequent chapters, 
and the question of interpretation must be delayed 
till the evidence as a whole has been produced. 
There is one point, however, to which it is worth 
while to refer now. The amount of powdered cheese 
contained in any one of my flasks was certainly not 
more than two grains, and none of the particles was 
bigger than a pin’s head, yet some critics talked 
of the protective influence of ‘ lumps,” and seemed 
to think that some Bacteria contained within such 
small particles of cheese could thereby escape the 
destructive influence of heat. This was the view 
brought forward after it had become perfectly certain 
that swarms of living Bacteria did, in fact, appear 
within my experimental vessels. 
But this was a complete change of front on the 
part of the critics. For in 1870, when Professor 
Huxley, and others who adopted his view, disbelieved 
in the presence of living Bacteria in my experimental 
vessels, they were willing to believe that com- 
paratively large masses of solid and semi-solid 
matter could be effectively sterilised by a temperature 
of 212° F. Thus Professor Huxley, in his presidential 
address after referring to such experiments as mine 
(but without mentioning names), made the following 
plausible, but very misleading, statements: ‘ The 
first reply that suggests itself is the probability that 
there must be some error about these experiments, 
because they are performed on an enormous scale 
