314 [ Jan. 19, 
Hartshorne. ] 
it must bring most cogent evidence. And the legitimate alternative, in 
regard to all the heating or boiling experiments, is, whether we are to ap- 
prehend in them new evidence of the resistance of some low living forms to 
the usually destructive influence of heat, or to assume the total effect 
of this, and then conclude that a de novo origination of life has 
really occurred. There are many facts which sustain the choice of the 
former interpretation ; facts, for instance, concerning confervoid vegetation 
in boiling springs, and such as those observed by G. Pouchet and others, 
proving the marvellous tenacity of rotiferous animalcular life. Jeffries 
Wyman’s experiments, moreover, seemed to show, that though four hours 
would not, five hours boiling would, probibit the appearance of any vi- 
tality in the materials under his examination. Frankland and Calvert 
have since strongly confirmed the same conclusion by their careful ex- 
periments. No one, however wedded to heterogeny, can say that 
we are yet at the end of our knowledge of the limits of vital resistance to 
physical agencies, including heat. But note further: that putting aside 
(although Professor Huxley does not) as unjustifiable, the supposition 
that it was possible for an observer like Bastian to be mistaken as to the 
really organic character of the very minute filaments and sporules, ob- 
served by him in tartrate of ammonia or other solutions, under restricted 
conditions, we must find in them at least something extraordinarily dif- 
ferent from the life which we are accustomed to observe ; since a very 
important part of the whole process was the entire exclusion of air; so 
that if there was life, it was such only as could exist in distilled water, 
or in vacuo. And here, just as in the controversy upon the essential dis- 
tinctions between animals and plants, since deoxidation and oxidation, 
fixation of carbon and its elimination, are directly opposite processes, 
though we may not yet find their separating line, still the line must exist 
somewhere. And it would be taking for granted a great deal more than 
any evolutionist has a right to do as yet, to suppose, not only that Bas- 
tian had thus manufactured sporules and filaments living in airless tartrate 
of ammonia, but that all he would need would be some greater variety of 
conditions and time to evolve from them the whole system of organized 
nature. Bastian himself has not yet asserted this. 
A word more about the above named opposition between vital and other 
cosmic forces. It may be stated thus: According to the nebular theory 
mostly accepted now as the basis of cosmogony and evolution, —the form- 
ation of the worlds of our solar system has been and is attended con- 
stantly by the integration of matter and the dissipation of force. I have, 
in this expression, used Hebert Spencer’s words. The spheres in consoli- 
dating from diffused nebulous matter give owt force as heat. But, per 
contra, organized beings integrate matter, and at the same time accumulate 
force. In the language of Professor Barker’s able discourse on the 
Correlation of Vital and Physical Forces, ‘‘the food of the plant is mat- 
ter whose energy is all expended ; it is fallen weight. The plant-organ- 
ism, in a way yet mysterious to us, converts the actual energy of the 
