: 
4 
| 1876.) - Spontaneous Generation. 415 
~ 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S EXPERIMENTS ON SPONTA- 
NEOUS GENERATION, AND DR. BASTIAN’S POSITION: 
BY RÉV. W. H. DALLINGER. 
IPEE largest difficulty surrounding the question of the mode of 
origin of septic organisms is that of discovering their life- 
cycle. By dealing with them in aggregations we run told and 
untold risks. The conflict of results by this means, in the most 
accomplished hands, employing the most refined methods during 
the past eighteen years, is a sufficient witness. Repetitions of 
experiments, and conflicting results, and explanations of the 
reason why, and so the cycle rolls. Of course important lessons 
in biology are learned, but not the lesson. And yet by the 
teachings of this complex and doubtful method alone Dr. Bastian 
is content to accept ‘* abiogenesis ” as a great fact in nature. 
To those who are best acquainted with the experimental his- 
tory of the subject for the last twenty — but certainly for the 
six— years this is the more remarkable. For the weight of 
evidence is certainly not only not in favor of ‘ abiogenesis,” but 
1s in the strongest sense adverse to it. The most refined, deli- 
cate, and continuous researches all point to the existence of what 
are at present ultra-microscopic germs. ‘This, indeed, is directly 
affirmed by the authors. A single and recent instance will suf- 
fi After a remarkable series of experiments detailed before 
the Royal Society, Dr. W. Roberts says: “ The issue of the 
foregoing inquiry has been to confirm in the fullest manner the 
main propositions of the panspermic theory, and to establish the 
conclusion that bacterta and torule, when they do not proceed 
tom visible parents like themselves, originate from invisible 
germs floating in the surrounding aérial and aqueous media.” 
But further, this has been remarkably sustained by analogical 
fvidence. There are putrefactive organisms that closely approx- 
mate to the bacteria in form, structure, and size. These are 
the « monads,” or, as Professor Huxley doubtless more fitly 
wames them, the Heteromita. They live side by side with the 
teria in the same putrescent mass, and certainly in the later 
Stages of the disintegration of dead organic matter are the most 
active and powerful agents. From their greater size they present 
* More promising field for microscopical research than the ‘bac- 
sya themselves ; and the life-history of some of these could be 
fully Mastered. I long since felt that valuable aid might thus 
1 i 
Extracts from an article in Popular Science Review, London, April, 1876. 
* 
