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Report on Zoology. 



thing as spontaneous generation has ever been observed 

 by man. " Looking back," says Prof. Huxley, " through 

 the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of the 

 commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any 

 means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions 

 of its appearance." 



In his inaugural address, however, Prof. Huxley made 

 no reference to a series of very ingenious experiments, the 

 results of which had been published some three months 

 previous by Dr. H. Chareton Bastian, and in which Dr. 

 Bastian seemed to have proved that living bacteria and 

 monads, with some curious looking fungoids, had been 

 developed in his fluids under circumstances which abso- 

 lutely precluded the presence of any germs within the 

 flasks, 



Dr. Bastian, therefore, wrote a caustic reply to Prof. 

 Huxley's address, which was answered by a cutting letter 

 from Prof. Huxley. Prof. Beale, Prof. Worthington, G. 

 Smith and others have taken active part in the controversy 

 which has become what would appear at this distance 

 decidedly more of a personal quarrel than a scientific dis- 

 cussion and thus the matter rests, awaiting still new ex- 

 periments and new discussions. 



Mr. Darwin's new book, Descent of Man, is the latest 

 sensation in Biological literature. A work so filled with 

 curious and instructive facts, the harvest of many years of 

 patient and well directed toil, can not fail to make its 

 impression as a work of profound learning whether its 

 conclusions are accepted or not. Every page is pregnant 

 with most interesting facts which are brought to bear upon 

 the subject in hand so ingeniously and well, that even the 

 objector is almost forced to accept his deductions. 



Whether the theory of natural selection and of the 

 descent of man shall finally be accepted by the scientific 

 world as acknowledged scientific doctrines or not, it is cer- 



