M>^ 



l^ 



234 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



occasions they were seen to have grown out into short, 

 chain-like filaments, such as are represented in Fig. 60. 

 During all the period in which the embryonal areas 

 were breaking up into these corpuscles, which soon as- 

 sumed the form of brown Fungus-germs, not a single 



■and 



Monad or Amoeba was to be seen in the solution- 

 yet during the whole time it had been standing side 

 by side with the other infusion which was prepared 

 at a temperature of i2o°-i25°F. Facts of this kind 



■ 

 I 



have been observed on several other occasions with 

 great constancy, so that one may safely state that 

 Fungus-germs or Monads and Amoebae may be procured 

 at will, by simply regulating the amount of heat at which 

 the infusion is prepared. The Monad and the Amoeba 

 represent more animalised modes of existence, which 

 are only able to manifest themselves in infusions in 



which the 



organic matter has 



not been too much 



deteriorated by the influence of heat. ' Such deterio- 

 ration seems to manifest itself by altering the develop- 

 mental potentialities of the primary forms of living 

 matter evolved in the infusion \ 



^ Seeing that the Monads or the Fungus-spores are produced, not 

 from invisible germs but from the segmentation of large embryonal 

 areas, every stage of whose formation can be accurately traced, this 

 seems the only possible explanation. If the opponent of Evolution con- 

 tends, in answer to one set of experiments with heated fluids and closed 

 flasks, that Monads are met with because their germs are capable of 

 resisting a temperature of 266°F, he cannot now contradict himself by 

 saying that embryonal areas formed on infusions which have been pre- 

 pared at a temperature of 158° F do not yield Monads, because such a tem- 

 perature is destructive to their germs. Neither is it open to him to say 



> 



for us to 



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'i~k final 

 atiaced, Ai 



'^"eri positi . 

 iffe obser; 



15; but 



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