Au^. 8, 1 872 J 



NATURE 



285 



hardly fairly stated. Dr. Bastian says : — " If the vital or 

 directive power resident in each particle of a living being 

 be other than a transformed physical force it must be one 

 which — in spite of the well-known formula ' e.v nihilo iiiliil 

 Jit ' — is capable of indefinite self-multiplication. Either 

 such force must be continually springing into being without 

 cause — originating itself or growing out of nothing — which 

 is an absurdity ; or else, within the ovum of any animal, 

 there must be locked up the whole of the peculiar vital 

 power which is afterwards to diffuse itself throughout the 

 body,'' &c. But this is by no means a necessary con- 

 ception of the '• vital force " or " \ital principle." That 

 force or principle need not, and cannot " reside " in any 

 particles of matter. If it exists it is cosmical, and acts 

 oil matter just as gravitation does. Is it any argument 

 against the reality of gravitation that any particle of 

 matter, however small, attracts any mass, however great ; 

 that, as Prof De Morgan puts it, each grain of salt and 

 pepper in a million salt-cellars and pepper-castors, indi- 

 vidually and separately/////, and actually move, the sun 

 and every fi.xed star ? This is a ri-diictio ad ahsKrdiim 

 against the notion that the force of gravitation resides in 

 matter ; but it does not touch the notion of gravitation as 

 an inscrutable cosmical force (probably the sourcc'of all 

 force) acting on matter. It appears to me, therefore, that 

 as long as consciousness, thought, and will cannot be 

 conceived of as manifestations of the " correlated series 

 of physical forces," we must postulate some universal 

 " vital principle " as co-extensive with, if not superior to 

 and the source of, the " physical forces ; " and if such 

 exists it is natural to impute to it some share in the pro- 

 duction of these wonderful ori^aiiisms through which 

 alone we see consciousness manifested. In another place 

 Dr. Bastian says that living protoplasm is believed by a 

 large section of the physiological world " to contain no 

 special and peculiar 'force;' but to owe its qualities 

 entirely to the ordinary physical properties of the elements 

 entering into its composition." It may not contain a 

 peculiar force, but surely it_does manifest some other pro- 

 perties than the ordinary physical properties of its 

 elements, just as the thundercloud, when it sends cut a 

 destructive lightning flash to the earth beneath, manifests 

 other than the " ordinary physical properties " of the 

 oxygen and hydrogen of which it is composed. Electricity 

 is an extra- ordinary property of matter, and vitality seems 

 to me to be still more extra-ordinary. Theyi'nv both ex- 

 hibit may be correlated with other forces ; but that does 

 not account for the special mode in which the force is 

 manifested in the one case more than in the other. 



In the second division of his work, " Archebiosis," Dr. 

 Bastiancommenccswith ahistoryof thediscussionon Spon- 

 taneous Generation from the time of Aristotle to that of 

 Pouchet and Pasteur. He then gives an outline of the 

 evidence as to the production of low organisms in infu- 

 sions. These are chiefly Bacteria and Toruhi;-, names 

 which are of such frequent occurrence that we reproduce 

 a woodcut (Fig. i), in which they are represented, the 

 straight objects c and // being Bacteria, while //, /, and Ic 

 represent Torula?; the small dots a are Monads, Micro- 

 zymes, or plastide particles, or they maybe Bacteria seen 

 endways ; while the other objects are Torula cells, or 

 fungus germs variously combined. These are the simplest 

 and most minute organisms ; but others a little larger 

 and more complex are shown in the next cut (Fig. 2), 

 under the names of \'ibriones, Leptothrix, Spirilla, anci 

 Mycelial filaments. These all exhibit unmistakeable signs 

 of life, growth, and reproduction, and they appear in im- 

 mense abundance iii a great variety of infusions of animal 

 and vegetable matter, however perfectly they may be shut 

 out from the surrounding atmosphere. Most experi- 

 menters have conceived that the presence of air was ne- 

 cessary in order to develop organisms, and with the air 

 it has been supposed that germs or ova have been 

 always introduced. These germs are, however, admitted 



to be invisible by the highest powers of our microscopes ; 

 their very existence is therefore hypothetical, and our 

 author shows very forcibly that Pasteur's supposed de- 

 monstration of their existence, and of their being the 

 source of the organisms which appear in infusions, is 

 wholly fallacious. He assumes at critical points of the 

 argument the impossibility of his opponent's views being 

 the true ones ; and imputes his negative results to his 

 having eliminated germs, when they can be equally well 

 shown to be due to unfavourable conditions for develop- 

 ment. But in order to avoid such complicated and in- 

 conclusive experiments as those carried on during the 

 celebrated discussion between Pasteur and Pouchet, Dr. 

 Bastian adopts a totally distinct method, which so narrows 

 the issue as to render it possible to arrive at semething 

 like absolute certainty in the results. Instead of intro- 

 ducing air, purified by various chemical means, into th€ 

 flasks after the infusions have been boiled, he hermetically 

 closes their narrow necks during vioknt ebullition, thus 

 producing an almost perfect vacuum above the liquid 

 contents. After this he submits the whole flask to a heat 

 varying from 2 {2° to over 400° F., and then places them in 

 favourable positions as regards light and heat. Under 

 these rigid conditions he finds large quantities of organ- 

 isms produced, which exhibit such unmistakeable signs of 

 life as growth and multiplication. Now here the issue is 

 reduced to its very narrowest limits, viz., what degree of 

 heat will destroy all these low forms of life ; and to deter- 

 mine this he adduces a series of experiments, detailed in 

 his chapter on " The Limits of Vital Resistance to Heat." 

 M. Pasteur found that the greatest tenacity of life was 

 possessed by the spores of certain' fungi of the family 

 MiU'i'dinciT, which germinated after being exposed to a 

 dry heat of 24S" to 257' F. for a few minutes, but half an 

 hour's exposure to the same dry heat killed them. A 

 Commission appointed in 1S60 by the Spci^td de Biologle 

 found that of the lower animals, the Rotifers, " Sloths," and 

 Anguillules found in moss, &c , were most tenacious of 

 life, but they were all killed by a lower temperature than 

 that above stated, so that we may fairly conclude a heat 

 of 266° F. for thirty minutes in dry air to be the limit of 

 vital resistance hitherto ascertained. In fluids, however, 

 a much lower temperature suffices. Hardly any low or- 

 ganisms can resist 167T', while 2 i2"F.for even one minute 

 is admitted by all experimenters on this subject to be fatal 

 to all classes of organisms met with in infusions, with 

 which alone we have now to deal. Bacteria and Yibriones, 

 however, are killed by a much lower temperature (130°- 

 140° F.) for ten minutes, as ascertained by a careful series 

 of experiments ; while several degrees lower was equally 

 fatal if prolonged for four hours. It has been objected 

 that the flasks being only partially filled, some germs or 

 organisms may escape the liquid and survive on the sides 

 of the glass ; but as they must be exposed to almost pure 

 steam of the same temperature as the water, and as the 

 heat actually employed was often greater than any such 

 organism can withstand, even in dry air, the objection 

 cannot be held to be valid. 



What, now, are we say to such experiments as the fol- 

 lowing : — Prof. Jeffries Wyman found Vibrios and Bacte- 

 riums moving with great rapidity in mutton juice which 

 had been exposed in a hermetically-sealed flask to a heat 

 of I20'6"C. for five minutes. Prof. Mantegazza found 

 living Bacteria in a decoction of lettuce which had been 

 similarly exposed for 30 minutes to 2S4'' F. Prof. Can- 

 toni, of Pavia, heated a solution of yolk of egg in a 

 hermetically-sealed flask up to 242° F., and found in it 

 after two days a large number of Vibrios. Dr. Bastian 

 himself exposed a strong infusion of turnip in a hermeti- 

 cally-sealed flask to a temperature of 27o°-275° F. for 

 twenty minutes. After two months the contents were 

 examined, and found to contain numbers of organisms, 

 of which the annexed cut (Fig. 3) represents a specimen. 

 Again, a solution of ammonic tartrate and sodic phos- 



