HEAT UPON LIVING MATTER. 173 
was itself deemed to be the best evidence that all 
‘germs’ which might have been contained in their 
interior had been killed. Now that the writer has 
demonstrated to unbelievers, and when others have 
ascertained for themselves, that organisms are to be 
met with and that putrefaction will occur within 
almost airless and hermetically sealed flasks whose 
contents have been previously boiled, the tactics of 
these unbelievers are entirely changed. Forgetting 
altogether the previous objection upon which they 
telied so long as they doubted the writer’s facts, they 
now advance an interpretation of his results, which. 
must carry with it its own stultification to the minds 
of those who are not similarly oblivious of their 
previous position. The writer’s methods are declared 
to be faulty because he did not think it needful to 
free his infusions from all particles, however minute 
and however soft. Impetuous critics now shake their 
heads, and talk with apparent learning about “the 
protective influence of lumps.” Whilst heat was 
previously supposed to be capable of operating asa 
germ-killer through pots of meats and vegetables, 
and whilst it has been proved to act in the same way 
through the thick and dry envelopes of seeds, now 
a pea or a minute particle of cheese, even though 
smaller than a pin’s head, is thought to exercise a 
“ protective influence” over imaginary germs! 
