TYNDALL ON SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 677 



Vance's Cream for Chilblains. — Ointment of mercuric nitrate, 1 ounce; 

 Camphor, 1 drachm ; Oil of turpentine, 2 drachms ; Oil of olives, 4 drachms. 

 Mix well. To be applied with gentle frictions before the chilblains break. 



Almond Powder for the Hands. — Almonds blanched and powdered, 1 

 pound ; powdered white Castile soap, 8 ounces ; powdered Orris root, 2 

 ounces ; powdered Pumice stone, 4 ounces ; oil of bitter almond, 2 drachms. 



Lemon Cordial. — Fresh lemon peel, 2 ounces ; fresh orange peel, 1 

 ounce; dry lemon peel, 2 ounces; diluted alcohol, 1 gallon ; water and 

 syrup, of each, 6 pints. 



SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY, 



TYNDA.LL ON SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 



Prof. Tyndall delivered the opening lecture of the winter session at the 

 London Institution on December 10. He said that within ten minutes' 

 walk of a little cottage which he has recently built in the Alps, there is a 

 small lake fed by the^melted snows of the upper mountains. During the 

 early weeks of summer no trace of life is to be discerned in this water, but 

 invariably toward the end of July or beginning of August swarms of tailed 

 organisms are seen enjoying the sun's warmth along the shallow margins 

 of the lake, and rushing with audible patter into the deeper water at the 

 approach of danger. The origin of this periodic crowd of living things is 

 by no means obvious. For years Dr. Tyndall has never noticed in the lake 

 either an adult frog or the smallest fragment of frog's spawn, so that were 

 he not otherwise informed, he should have found the conclusion of Mathiole 

 a natural one — namel}^, that tadpoles are generated in lake mud by the 

 vivifjnng action of the sun. The checks which experience alone can fur- 

 nish being absent, the spontaneous generation of animals quite as high as 

 the frog in the scale of being was assumed for ages as a fact. For nearly 

 twenty centuries after Aristotle men found no difficulty in believing in cases 

 of spontaneous generation which would now be regarded as monstrous by 

 the most fanatical supporters of the doctrine. Eedi, in 1668, by careful 

 experiments, destroyed the belief in the spontaneous generation of maggots 

 in putrid meat. The combat was continued by Vallisneri, Schwammerdam 

 •and Eeammiiir, who succeeded in banishing the notion of spontaneous gen- 

 eration from the scientific minds of their day. As regards the complex 



