1870 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 15 



naturally been deeply interested from the first; he 

 had been consulted by Dr. Bastian, and, I believe, 

 had advised him not to publish until he had made 

 quite sure of his ground. This question and the 

 preparation of the course of Elementary Biology l led 

 him to carry on a series of investigations lasting over 

 two years, which took shape in a paper upon " Peni- 

 cillium, Torula, and Bacterium," 2 first read in Section 

 D at the British Association, 1870 ; and in his article 

 on " Yeast " in the Contemporary Review for December 

 1871. He laboriously repeated Pasteur's experiments, 

 and for years a quantity of flasks and cultures used 

 in this work remained at South Kensington, until 

 they were destroyed in the eighties. Of this work 

 Sir J. Hooker writes to him : 



You have made an immense leap in the association of 

 forms, and I cannot but suppose you approach the final 

 solution. . . . 



I have always fancied that it was rather brains and 

 boldness, than eyes or microscopes that the mycologists 

 wanted, and that there was more brains in Berkeley's 3 

 crude discoveries than in the very best of the French and 

 German microscopic verifications of them, who filch away 

 the credit of them from under Berkeley's nose, and pooh- 

 pooh his reasoning, but for which we should be, as we 

 were. 



In his Presidential Address, "Biogenesis and 

 Abiogenesis " (Coll. Ess. viii. p. 229), he discussed the 

 rival theories of spontaneous generation and the 



1 See p. 81, sqq. 



" Quart. Jmirn. Micr. Sci., 1870, x. pp. 355-362. 

 s Rev. M. J. Berkeley. 



