Address of Professor Hualey. 389 
this hypothesis, a piece of beef, or a handful of hay, is dead 
) only in a limited se The beef is dead ox, and the hay is 
ut the great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful 
hypothesis by an ugly fact—which is so constantly being enacted 
under the eyes of philosophers, was played, almost immediately, 
for the benefit of Buffon and ; 
nce more, an Italian, the Abbé Spallanzani, a worthy suc- 
cessor and representative of Redi in his acuteness, his ingenuity, _ 
and his learning, subjected the experiments and the conclusions 
of Needham toa searching criticism. It might be true that 
- 
ae 
ro 
bak 
place, the glass vessels in which the infusions were contained 
were hermetically sealed by fusing their necks, and if, in the 
teenth century, grew apace, 
with the great problems which biology had vainly tried to at- 
tack without her help. The discovery of oxygen led to the 
laying of the foundations of a scientific theory of — 
and to an examination of the marvellous interactions of organic 
: exam) 
substances with oxygen. The presence of free oxygen appeared 
to be one of the conditions of the existence of life, and of those 
* See Spallanzani, “‘Opere,” vi, pp. 42 and 61. 
ae 
SOE Sp tS cl ia 
