248 NOTES. 
earus; Pouchet and Pasteur have long debated it; Owen, Ben- 
nett, Clark, and a few others have of late years reasserted it; 
Bastian (Nature, 1870) makes an elaborate experimental defense 
of it. We note concerning it as follows: (a) The manipulation 
(to avoid introducing minute viable forms) requires an almost or 
quite impracticable delicacy throughout. (b) When heat is used 
we have always the alternative of concluding that certain minute 
organisms, germs or spores, can resist a higher temperature than 
was supposed, or that, taking for granted that the heat employed 
must have killed all germs, new life afterwards sprang up witi- 
out parentage. All experience makes the former much more 
ould not, five hours would put an end to all manifestations of 
life. Frankland’s experiments (and Calvert’s) gave similar results 
against abiagenesis. (c) Supposing (although Huxley does not) 
that Bastian could not have mistaken ‘“ nian” molecular 
movements for evidence of life, we yet observe that, if life sprang 
up in Bastian’s apparatus, it was such life as can exist without at 
or oxygen; altogether unlike, therefore, ordinary world-life. W — 
The assertion of Pasteur is justified, that the onus probandi ar 
with abiagenesists, since there is no experience of any living ay 
more than +5455 of an inch in diameter springing into life — 
inorganic matter ; it is, therefore, vastly improbable (needing inch 
cogent evidence to prove) that any form less than zo00 of an 
in size can be made to spring into life from inorganic matter. re 
11. While abiagenesis is wnproved, we hold to the conclus o 
that vital force is not the mere outcome or resultant of any 0t # 
of the other cosmic forces. : ogieal 
12. How does it differ? Of the organic cell or “ physiol ation 
unit,” the most constant determinable acts or changes are Me, an 
and excretion ; atomic or molecular motion, definite in results, 18 | ae 
essential of life. Must not the motion itself be peculiar? sation : 
13. More definitely, we find,—that, while in the condi n and 
of matter in the (nebular theoretical) formation of the of fore 
“ 
Cone $ a 
_ 14. Sexual union is closely analogous to chemical gees « 
instead of combustion, it makes construction by detaining P = 
ucts. a hyllo- 
15. Again we notice the analogy between the spira ey 
taxis of plants (opposite leaves a double spiral, w one ae 
more, and bilateral symmetry of vertebrates and 
some mollusks, and radial symmetry of radiates an 
corresponding) and the spiral helix of the electro-magn®* 
