F unz 30, 1870 | 
NATURE 
i 
17 
so small, momentary ebullition could generally be renewed 
again and again for the space of five minutes after they had 
been hermetically sealed, by the mere application of one of my 
fingers, which had been dipped into cold water, to a portion of 
the glass above the level of the fluid. The water-hammer effect 
was also very obvious~in several. which were tested in this 
fashion. 
I believe that an almost perfect vacuum can be produced in 
this way ; in the first violent ebullition the air is driven out of 
the flask by the fluid, and as ebullition is continuously kept 
up after this till the flask is hermetically sealed, there is always 
an outpouring of heated vapour, and no opportunity for a re- 
ingress of air. But, even if in any given case the vacuum 
should not prove to be absolute, it does not seem to me that 
there would be any material abatement from the severity of the 
conditions which the panspermatists have a right to demand. 
Tf, on the one hand, absolutely the whole of the air had not been 
expelled from the flasks during the process of ebullition, what 
remained would necessarily be mixed up witha very much larger 
quantity of continually renewed aqueous vapour, and the effect 
would probably be that any living things would be just as 
effectually and destructively heated as if they were lodged in the 
boiling solution itself ; whilst if, on the other hand, the boiling 
had been arrested for one or two seconds before the complete 
closure of the almost capillary orifice at the mouth of the flask, 
even if any air entered, it would have had first to pass through 
the blow-pipe flame, and then through the white-hot capillary 
orifice—it would in fact have been calcined as in Schwann’s 
experiment. The conditions of the experiment would then have 
been no less severe, and the only effect would be that the 
vacuum with which I prefer to work would have been rendered 
by so much the less complete. Although I make these remarks 
with the view of meeting criticisms, Iam inclined to think that the 
vacuum in my experiments has been complete’; and it should be 
remembered that M. Pasteur always adopted this method when 
he wished to preserve solutions for a time 7 vacw2. Whenever 
he desired to make comparative trials with the air of different 
localities, the solutions which had been prepared in this way 
were assumed by him to be contained 7 vacuo, so that the flasks 
could then be taken to the localities, with the air of which he 
wished to experiment. There the necks of the flasks were 
broken, in order that they might become filled with the air of 
the respective localities. After this had been done the flasks 
were resealed, and kept for future observation of their contained 
fluids. M. Pasteur, M. Pouchet, and others who adopted this 
method, carried away their experimental fluids zz vacuo, 
during a two or three days’ journey to the Alps or to the 
Pyrenees, and it never seemed to have occurred to either of them 
that evolutional changes might be taking place during their 
journey. M. Pasteur, in fact, habitually shut his eyes to all 
such possibilities, they did not come within the range of what he 
considered possible ; such thoughts might, however, have sug- 
gested themselves to M. Pouchet and others, although this does 
not seem to have been the case. 
After the flasks had been prepared in the way above men- 
tioned, they were suspended beneath the mantelpiece in my 
study. During the day there was always a fire in the room, 
and at night I put my reading lamp underneath them with the 
flame properly turned down. So far as I haye been able to 
ascertain, the temperature to which they have heen subjected has 
mostly ranged between 23'—29° C. (75°-—86° F.) Sometimes 
they have been exposed to the lower temperature and sometimes 
to the higher, and I suspect that a variation of this kind may 
perhaps be more favourable for the production of evolutional 
changes than maintenance at a constant temperature. 
In detailing the results of the following experiments, I shall 
not enter into any minute description of the organisms found. 
My main object throughout has been to obtain evidence on the 
subject as to whether a de zovo evolution of Living things could 
or could not take place. The demands upon my time have been so 
serious in the carrying on of these investigations, that occasionally 
it has only been small portions of the experimental fluids which 
have been examined. If, for instance, what I found in the first 
few drops of the fluid left no doubt in my mind as to the nature 
and abundance of some Living things contained therein, the 
remaining portions of the fluid were frequently not examined. 
Other bodies, therefore, may have been contained in the solutions, 
which were never seen at all. 
H. CHARLTON BASTIAN 
(Zo be continued.) 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
THE American Naturalist for June contains several excellent 
articles. The first is by Prof. J. S. Newberry, ‘* On the Surface 
Geology of the Basin of the great Lakes and the Valley of the 
Mississippi.” Inthe northern half of this area down to the 
parallel of 38° to 40° N. lat., are found, not everywhere, but in 
most localities where the nature of the underlying rocks is such 
as to retain inscriptions made upon them, the unmistakeable in- 
dications of glacial action. Some of the valleys and channels 
which bear the marks of glacial action, evidently formed or 
modified by ice, and dating from the ice period of an earlief 
epoch, are excavated far below the present lakes and watef: 
courses which occupy them. These valleys form a connected 
system of drainage at a lower level than the present river system, 
and lower than could be produced without a continental eleva- 
tion of several hundred feet. Upon the glacial surface are found 
aseries of unconsolidated materials, generally stratified, called 
the drift deposits. These consist in the lowest stratum of the 
Erie clays of Sir William Logan, above which are sands con- 
taining beds of gravel; and’ near the surface elephants’ teeth 
have been found, water-worn and rounded. Upon these strati- 
fied clays, sands, and gravel of the drift, are scattered boulders 
and blocks of all sizes, of granite, greenstone, siliceous and mica 
slates, and various other metamorphic and eruptive rocks, 
generally traceable to some locality inthe Eozoic area of the 
lakes. Among these boulders many balls of native copper have 
been found, which could have come from nowhere else than the 
copper district of Lake Superior. Above all these drift deposits, 
and more recent than any of them, are the ‘‘lake ridges,” 
corresponding to our raised sea-beaches, embankments of sand, 
gravel, sticks, leaves, &c., which run imperfectly parallel with 
the present outlines of the lake margins, where highlands lie 
in the rear of such margins. The general conclusions drawn 
are the existence of a glacial epoch over the northern half of the 
continent cf North America, probably contemporaneous with that 
of Europe, and with a climate comparable to that of Greenland ; 
that the courses of these ancient glaciers correspond in a general 
way with the present channels of drainage; and that at this period 
the continent must have been several hundred feet higher than 
now.—‘‘ A Winter's Day in the Yukon Territory,” by W. H. 
Dall, refutes the prevalent idea, perpetuated even by ‘‘ official” 
reports, that the island of St. Paul is surrounded in winter by 
immense masses of ice, on which the polar bears and arctic foxes 
sail down from the north and engage in pitched battles with the © 
wretched inhabitants. The fact is that there is no solid and very 
little floating ice near St. Paul in winter ; the arctic foxes found 
there as well as on most of the islands were purposely introduced 
by the Russians for propagation, a certain number of skins being 
taken annually ; and there is no authentic evidence that the polar 
bear has ever been found south of Behring’s Straits. The country 
of Alaska comprises two climatic regions, which differ as widely 
as Labrador and South Carolina in their winter temperature. 
One contains the mainland north of the peninsula of Alaska and 
the islands north of the St. Matthew group; the other includes the 
coast and islands south and east of Kadiak, while the Aleutian 
Islands, with the group of St. Paul and St. George, are some- 
what intermediate. A day’s excursion during the winter season 
in the northern and more inhospitable of these two regions 
yielded a considerable number of interesting animals.—Articles 
of a popular character are “ Our native Trees and Shrubs,” by 
Rey. J. W. Chickering, Jun. ; and ‘‘ A Few Words about Moths,” 
by A. S. Packard, Jun. A review of Principal Dawson’s article 
in the Canadian Naturalist on ‘* Modern Ideas of Derivation,” 
criticises, favourably on the whole, that writer’s strictures on the 
Darwinian theory of Natural Selection.—The Natural History 
Miscellany contains many interesting notes, either original or 
culled from English scientific journals. 
The fourth part of the Jenaische Zeitschrift fiir Medicin und 
Naturwissenschaft, Jane 1870, contains the following important 
articles. 1. Gegenbauer on the skeleton of the limbs of Verte- 
brata, and of the Selachia and Chimera in particular. 2. Abbe 
ona spectrum apparatus for the microscope. 3. Dr. Dohrn : 
Further researches on the structure and development of the Ar- 
thropoda, especially bearing on the Zoea stage of Crustacea ; and 
lastly, a long and interesting paper by Ernst Haeckel on the 
‘© Plastiden-theorie,” in which he treats fully of the deep-sea life 
brought to light by the dredgings of Drs. Wallich, Carpenter, 
Wyville Thomson, Huxley,and others, describing the Bathybius, 
Coccoliths, Globigerina, &c, He confesses himself unable to 
