1871.] The Theory of Atmospheric Germs. 153 



altogether failed to fulfil the expectations which the 

 originators of the College of Chemistry entertained when 

 they placed the new institution under my direction, it is 

 due to the powerful influence which the friendship of Sir 

 James exercised upon my career at that most important 

 period of my life. 



Postscript. Having in the preceding sketch pointed out 

 the early exertions which Sir James Clark made to procure 

 a Government grant for the College of Chemistry, it is 

 certainly not without interest to contemplate that at present a 

 Royal Commission is sitting in London charged to inquire 

 in what manner science can be best promoted in England 

 by the grant of Government subvention, and that the 

 author of this sketch, whilst writing it, has received from 

 that Commission an invitation to proceed to England for the 

 purpose of giving evidence on the mode in which scientific 

 institutions are supported by Government in Germany. 



II. THE THEORY OF ATMOSPHERIC GERMS. 

 By Arthur Ernest Sansom, M.D., 

 . Member of the Royal College of Physicians. 



r- v o 



/Jv\NE of the most celebrated of the Deputies lately com- 

 vivy menced a speech before the Austrian Reichsrath with 

 the words : — " The great question before us is, — Is 

 Charles Darwin right or wrong ?" Probably this sounded 

 strangely, for the world is not accustomed to be told sud- 

 denly that the solution of a scientific problem is material to 

 its position or its progress. There is another great question 

 which has been recently debated with a considerable amount 

 of warmth, and has seemed to evoke a very considerable 

 interest. Mighty issues are involved in it, and yet its problems 

 are interwoven with the most ordinary processes of domestic 

 life. It has to do with the most abstruse speculations as 

 to the origin of living things in the kingdom of nature. It 

 concerns the art of the brewer and the maker of wine. It is 

 linked with the processes which preserve food from decom- 

 position and sewage matters from being hurtful to mankind ; 

 with the treatment of wounds and with the arrest and pre- 

 vention of pestilence. Complex in its relations, the question 

 can nevertheless be curtly stated — Do living things of 

 necessity spring from pre-existing living things or no ? 



VOL. VIII. (O.S.) — VOL. I. (N.S.) X 



