356 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxiv 



ogy * led him to carry on a series of investigations lasting 

 over two years, which took shape in a paper upon " Peni- 

 cillium, Torula, and Bacterium," f first read in Section D 

 at the British Association, 1870; and in his article on 

 "Yeast" in the Contemporary Review iov December 1872. 

 He laboriously repeated Pasteur's experiments, and for 

 years a quantity of flasks and cultures used in this work 

 remained at South Kensington, until they were destroyed 

 in the eighties. Of this work Sir J. Hooker writes to 

 him: — 



You have made an immense leap in the association of forms, 

 and I cannot but suppose you approach the final solution. . . . 



I have always fancied that it was rather brains and boldness, 

 than eyes or microscopes that the mycologists wanted, and that 

 there was more brains in Berkeley's X crude discoveries than in 

 the very best of the French and German microscopic verifica- 

 tions of them, who filch away the credit of them from under 

 Berkeley's nose, and pooh-pooh his reasoning, but for which 

 we should be, as we were. 



In his Presidential Address, " Biogenesis and Abiogene- 

 sis " {Coll. Ess. viii. p. 229), he discussed the rival theories 

 of spontaneous generation and the universal derivation of 

 life from precedent life, and professed his belief, as an act 

 of philosophic faith, that at some remote period, life had 

 arisen out of inanimate matter, though there was no evi- 

 dence that anything of the sort had occurred recently, the 

 germ theory explaining many supposed cases of spontaneous 

 generation. The history of the subject, indeed, showed " the 

 great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hy- 

 pothesis by an ugly fact — which is so constantly being 

 enacted under the eyes of philosophers," and recalled the 

 warning " that it is one thing to refute a proposition, and 

 another to prove the truth of a doctrine which, implicitly 

 or explicitly, contradicts that proposition." 



Two letters to Dr. Dohrn refer to this address and to 

 the meeting of the Association. 



* See p. 405, sqq. f Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., 1870, X. pp. 355-362. 

 ± Rev. W. F. Berkeley. 



