HEAT UPON LIVING MATTER. 169 
kinds of living matter can resist the influence of 
boiling water. 
In the first place it should be said that not one 
of these modern Panspermatists has striven to justify 
his position by scientific evidence bearing directly 
upon the death-point of Bacteria and their germs, 
whilst several of them have openly attempted to 
make good their position in the most unscientific 
manner — that is, by adducing, when facts seem 
adverse, experiments admitting of two interpretations, 
as though they only admitted of one, and then of 
these two possible interpretations selecting that which 
the experiments were neither calculated to warrant 
nor originally destined to illustrate. This shuffling 
with conclusions becomes all the more reprehensible 
when the interpretation selected is known to be 
directly contradicted by other less equivocal evidence, 
as to the very existence of which, however, those who 
adopt this course take care to say nothing.* This 
is a kind of treason to Science, of which one can 
only hope that the future may prove less prolific 
than the past has been. 
And, if we turn now to the specific statements 
made by those who profess to believe that Bacteria 
and their germs are able to resist the influence of 
* See p. 136, Also ‘‘ Nature,” 1873, Nos. 190-193, 206, 207, and 
209, 
