144 THE DESTRUCTIVE INFLUENCE OF 
the boiling point of water.** And as there is a con- 
siderable resemblance between seeds and eggs, Spal- 
lanzani was led to hope that something of the same 
alleged extraordinary capacity for resisting heat 
might be possessed by the eggs or germs of such 
organisms as make their appearance in previously 
boiled fluids. He was therefore stimulated to under- 
take fresh observations upon eggs and seeds generally, 
with the view, on the one hand, of ascertaining the 
precise temperature which proved fatal to each kind, 
and, on the other, of finding out whether these eggs 
or seeds were capable of resisting a greater degree of 
heat than the several animals or plants to which they 
belonged. 
This latter part of the inquiry was rightly deemed 
by Spallanzani to be of great importance and capable 
of affording him much guidance towards the proper 
interpretation of his other experiments. He had 
already determined that the lower Infusoria them- 
selves are killed at a temperature of 34° Réaumur, or 
108$° F.; and now having found that such organisms: 
* Heated in all probability in the dry state. But it is well known 
that seeds and desiccated animals can resist the influence of heat much 
better in the dried state than when they are thoroughly moistened and 
then heated, and it is as to the effects of heat upon living matter under 
the latter conditions that we are at present concerned. For this reason, 
therefore, I shall not dwell upon certain other experiments of Spallan- 
zani, in which he heated seeds in the midst of dry sand—they lie 
outside the houndaries of our present inquiry. 
