
IMPORTANT NEW EXPERIMENTS 147 
The Question of the Interpretation oe these 
Experiments. 
All other experimenters had found, as I have 
shown, that acid urine after it had been boiled for a 
few minutes, and subsequently guarded from con- 
tamination, remained barren; and the explanation 
given by all was that all living things had been killed 
in the urine by the temperature of 100° C. 
The fact, therefore, of the fermentation of some 
specimens of boiled acid urine, with the appearance 
of swarms of Bacteria therein, under the influence of 
the high incubating temperature of 122° F. (50° C.), 
seems inexplicable except upon the supposition that 
fermentation has, in these instances, been initiated 
without the aid of living germs, and that the 
organisms first appearing in such fluids have been 
evolved therein. 
If my further position (Proceedings of Royal 
Soczety, Nos. 143 and 145, 1873) that Bacteria 
and their germs are killed in fluids, whether acid 
or alkaline, at a temperature of 158° F. (7o’ C.) is 
correct, then the occurrence of fermentation in the 
previously neutralised boiled urine would similarly 
disprove the exclusive germ-theory of fermentation, 
and establish the doctrine of Archebiosis. 
Any difficulty which might have been felt by 
others in accepting the above interpretation of the 
a fuller account, with many more details, in the Journal of the 
Linnean Society (Zool.), Nos. 73 and 74 (October 1877 and May 1878), 
extracts from which I have been reproducing here. 
