724 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



this great deficiency it was considered by some that their mode 

 of origin could be determined by heat experiments on the adult 

 forms. Eoughly the method was this. It was assumed that nothing 

 vital could resist the boiling point of water. Fluids containing 

 full-grown organisms in enormous multitudes, chiefly bacteria, were 

 placed in flasks, and boiled for from 5 to 10 minutes. While they 

 were boiling the necks of the flasks were hermetically closed, and the 

 flask was allowed to remain unopened for various periods. The 

 reasoning was : Boiling has killed all forms of vitality in the flask. 

 By the hermetical sealing nothing living can gain subsequent access 

 to the fluid ; therefore, if living organisms do appear when the flask 

 is opened, they must have arisen in the dead matter de novo by 

 spontaneous generation. But if they do never so arise the probability 

 is that they originate in spores or eggs. Now it must be observed 

 concerning this method of inquiry that it could never be final ; it is 

 incompetent by deficiency. Its results could never be exhaustive 

 until the life-histories of the organisms involved were known. And 

 further, although it is a legitimate method of research for partial 

 results, and was of necessity employed, yet it requires precise and 

 accurate manipulation. A thousand possible errors surround it. It 

 can only yield scientific results in the hands of a master in physical 

 experiment. And we find that when it has secured the requisite skill, 

 as in the hands of Prof. Tyndall for example, the result has been 

 the irresistible deduction that living things have never been seen to 

 originate in not-living matter. Then the ground is cleared for the 

 strictly biological inquiry, How do they originate ? 



To answer that question we must study the life-histories of the 

 minutest forms with the same continuity and thoroughness with which 

 we study the development of a crayfish or a butterfly. The difficulty 

 in the way of this is the extreme minuteness of the organisms. 

 We require powerful and perfect lenses for the work. Happily 

 during the last fifteen years the improvement in the construction of the 

 most powerful lenses has been great indeed. Prior to this time there 

 were English lenses that amplified enormously. But an enlargement 

 of the image of an object avails nothing if there be no concurrent 

 disclosure of detail. Little is gained by expanding the image of an 

 object from the ten-thousandth of an inch to an inch, if there be not 

 an equivalent revelation of hidden details. It is in this revealing 

 quality, which I shall call magnification as distinct from amplification, 

 that our recent lenses so brilliantly excel. It is not easy to convey 

 to those unfamiliar with objects of extreme minuteness a correct idea 

 of what this power is. But at the risk of extreme simplicity, and to 

 make the higher reaches of my subject intelligible to all, I would 

 fain make this plain." Dr. Dallinger then went on to give a series of 

 greatly magnified illustrations, beginning with the sting of the bee, 

 and going on through a long series of interesting specimens of the 

 lowest forms of life. He described and illustrated with great 

 minuteness experiments in the generation of these forms of life, 

 from all of which he maintained it to be clearly proved that dead 

 matter cannot be developed into living. 



