398 APPENDIX. 



juice, blood, wine, &c., from tlie very interior of the organs 

 which contain those liquids, with the necessary precautious to 

 avoid contact with the particles of dust in suspension in the air 

 or spread over objects. According to the hypothesis of M. 

 Fremy, these liquids must of necessity ferment in the presence 

 of pure air. According to us, the very opposite of this must 

 be the case. Here, then, is a crucial experiment of the most 

 decisive kind for determining the merits of the rival theories, 

 a criterion, moreover, which M. Fremy perfectly admits. In 

 1863, and again in 1872, we published the earliest experiments 

 that were made in accordance with this decisive method. The 

 result was as follows : — The grape juice did not ferment in 

 vessels full of air, air deprived of its particles of dust — that is 

 to say, it did not produce any of the ferments of wine ; the 

 blood did not putrefy — that is to say, it yielded neither bacteria 

 nor vibrios ; urine did not become ammoniacal — that is to say, 

 it did not give rise to any organism ; in a word the origin of 

 life manifested itself in no single instance. 



In the presence of arguments so irresistible as these, M. Fremy, 

 throughout the 250 pages of his work, continues to repeat that 

 these results, which, he admits, seem subversive of his theory, 

 are, nevertheless, explicable by the circumstance that the air in 

 our vessels, although pure at first, underwent a sudden chemical 

 change when it came in contact with the blood, or urine, or 

 grape juice ; that the oxygen became converted into carbonic 

 acid gas, and that, in consequence, hemi-organism could no 

 longer exercise its force. We are astonished at this assertion, 

 for M. Fremy must be aware that, since J 863, we have given 

 analyses of the air in our vessels after they had remained sterile 

 for several days — for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty days — at the 

 highest atmospheric temperatures, and that oxygen was still 

 present, often even in proportions almost identical with those 

 to be found in atmospheric air.* Why has M. Fremy made no 

 allusion to these analyses ? This was the chief, the essential 



* See Covtptes rendus, vol. Ixi., p. 734, 1863. 



