174 Jeffries Wyman. 
life;” but all would not have concluded that, after all, they 
“Tf, on the one hand, it is urged that all organisms, in so far 
as the early history of them is known, are derived from ova, 
and therefore from analogy we must ascribe a similar origin to 
these minute beings the early history of which we do not know, 
it may be urged with equal force, on the other hand, that all 
ova and spores, in so far as we know anything about them, 
are destroyed by prolonged boiling; therefore from analogy 
we are equally bound to infer that Vibrios, Bacterians, ete., 
could not have been derived from ova, since these would all 
have been destroyed by the conditions to which they have 
been subjected. he argument from analogy is as strong im 
the one case as in the other.” Ay 
Returning to the subject again a few years later, with a critl- 
eal series of twenty experiments, each of three, five, ten, fifteen, 
or even twenty flasks, used by way of checks and comparisons, 
—a rigorous experimenter would have been satisfied when he 
had proved that sealed solutions, subjected to a heat of at least 
212° for from one to four hours, became the seat of infusorial 
life, at least of such as Vibrios, Bacterians and Monads, while 
all infusoria having the faculty of locomotion were shown by & 
special series of experiments to lose this at a temperature of 
120°, or at most 134° Fahr. But Prof. Wyman carried the 
boiling up to five hours, and in these flasks no infusoria of any 
ind appeared. The question of abiogenesis stands to-day very 
much where Prof. Wyman left it seven years ago 
upon the Florida shell-mounds, was sent to the printer just be: 
fore he died. 
