496 The Controversy on Spontaneous Generation. [Oct., 



On examining the rain which had fallen in both these localities 

 I found, naturally enough, no animal or plant germs in that from 

 the lower part of the town, although it was highly charged with 

 soot and various kinds of dirt ; but in that which had been collected 

 near my house, I found on the same day a few of the unicellular 

 organisms as before, some single, others undergoing sub-division ; 

 also a little soot and silex. On the following day I expected these 

 germs would have sprouted, and I was not mistaken. I had cleansed 

 my tubes well with sulphuric acid, after having made them red-hot, 

 and had taken every possible precaution to avoid fusion of the fluids 

 or their contents ; but the result was unmistakable. The particles 

 of soot and silex were present in the Yauxhall Eoad water, but no 

 germs of any kind, nor any mycelium ; whilst that caught in Everton 

 was full of unicellular organisms in various stages of growth and sub- 

 division, and the particles of soot had become beds, as it were, in 

 which the germs were sprouting, for out of them grew fibrous fila- 

 ments precisely resembling those which I had first observed in the 

 infusions (Fig. 7). On the 24th (the following day) these filaments 

 had assumed the form of a straggling mycelium, not so thick as in 

 the former infusions, and not so much interlaced, but the identity 

 of the organisms was quite undoubted. There were also swarms of 

 minute rapidly-moving infusorial germs along with somewhat larger 

 ciliated infusoria. 



Coupling, then, my experiments of former years with those 

 recently tried by me, the results, as far as they bear on this con- 

 troversy, are as follows : — 



In 1863. I found in infusions of orange and cabbage juice the 

 germs and mycelium, which constitute the earlier stages of mildew 

 fungi, and at the same time I found those lowly plant forms in 

 pure distilled water which had been exposed to the atmosphere. 

 Eecently I again found this plant type in an infusion of orange- 

 juice, and traced its growth into a mildew fungus. I also found it 

 in pure distilled water, and afterwards, well developed, in rain- 

 water caught as it fell direct from the clouds. This plant, or one 

 closely allied to it, Dr. Bastian believes to have been spontaneously 

 generated in an infusion of turnip-juice contained in vacuo in a 

 closed tube. 



Again in 1862-3. Dr. Balbiani in Paris, and I in Liverpool, 

 found simultaneously in pure distilled water exposed to the atmo- 

 sphere, and in dust taken from window-panes and elsewhere, various 

 infusorial animalculae, especially one well-defined type, which I have 

 again recently found in pure distilled water, and in dust which had 

 been submitted to a high temperature. And that such animal 

 germs are present in the atmosphere in all parts of the world, I 

 showed some years since, by submitting to microscopical observa- 



