396 



APPENDIX. 



"Whilst this work was passing through the press there ap- 

 peared two small works on the subject of the generation of 

 inferior organisms. 



One of them was by M, Fremy. The author's object seems 

 to have been merely to give an account, under a new form, of 

 the part which he took in the discussion on the origin of fer- 

 ments that was carried on before the 'Academy of Sciences in 

 1871-1872. In the course of that discussion M. Fremy had 

 announced his intention of publishing an extensive Memoir, full 

 of facts, bearing on the subject. The perusal of the promised 

 work gave us much disappointment. Not only were our experi- 

 ments, and the conclusions which we drew from them, given 

 there, for the most part in a manner which we could not possibly 

 accept, but, moreover, M. Fremy had confined himself to 

 deducing, by the help of his favourite hj'pothesis, a series of d 

 priori opinions based on half-finished experiments, not one of 

 which, in our opinion, had been brought to the state of demon- 

 stration. To tell the truth, his work was the romance of 

 hemi-organism, just as M. Pouchet's work of an earlier date was 

 the romance of heterogenesis. And yet, what could be clearer 

 than the subject under discussion? We maintain, adducing in- 

 contestable experimental evidence in support of our theory, that 



