140 



Mr. W. N. Hartley on the 



[Feb. 8, 



II. " Experiments concerning the Evolution of Life from Lifeless 

 Matter." By Walter Noel Hartley, F.C.S., Demonstrator 

 of Chemistry, King's College, London. Communicated by W. 

 Odling, M.B., F.R.S. Received December 7, 1871. 



The work already accomplished, and the arguments adduced both in 

 favour of and contradictory to the theory of spontaneous generation, have 

 been so frequently under discussion of late, that it is needless to enter on>a 

 review of them. Furthermore, the question is one in which verbal argu- 

 ment is of little value compared with experimental evidence. 



On June 30th, 1870, there appeared in ' Nature ' a paper by Dr. Bastian, 

 entitled " Facts and Reasonings concerning the heterogeneous evolution of 

 Living Things the perusal of this, and its continuation, led to the belief 

 that another interpretation might be put on the results obtained by Schwann, 

 Pasteur, and others, not so much by virtue of the arguments made use of, 

 as by accounts of experiments given in detail. The most remarkable case 

 was that of Exp. 19, in which the author gave a drawing of a large 

 organized mass obtained from a solution of sodium phosphate and am- 

 monia tartrate, which had been exposed to a temperature varying between 

 146° C. and 153° C. for four hours. This organism was seen to grow 

 within the flask till it attained a certain size, beyond which it did not in- 

 crease. Now a fact so distinctly stated as the production of an organism, 

 and its development to a considerable size, from a liquid containing nothing 

 further than phosphate of soda and tartrate of ammonia, in a flask from which 

 the air had been most thoroughly withdrawn, and which, when contain- 

 ing the liquid and hermetically sealed, had been heated to so high a tem- 

 perature, was (admitting the conditions and performance of the experiments 

 to be faultless) an absolute proof of the evolution of living matter de novo. 

 For my own satisfaction, I determined to commence a series of careful 

 experiments, in some cases adhering strictly to the conditions of those 

 made by Dr. Bastian ; but it was necessary to devise some refinement on 

 the mode of examining the liquids experimented on without exposure to 

 atmospheric air ; the means for accomplishing this I will now describe. 

 The most promising plan seemed to be, to open the sealed vessels in an 

 atmosphere artificially prepared so as to be free of living matter. Hydrogen 

 being fourteen times lighter than common air, may remain in contact with 

 it without risk of contamination by floating matter ; indeed Prof. Tyndall's 

 demonstration, by means of a powerful beam of light, that such an atmo- 

 sphere is free from dust, was sufficient to warrant its use. The means 

 whereby this fact was made of further practical value are the following : — 

 1st. The experimental tubes in which the infusions and solutions were 

 heated were made of ordinary combustion tubing drawn out at the lower 

 end, first to a finer tube \ the diameter of the original, and after a space of 

 an inch or so to extreme smallness. The solution or infusion was then 

 made in a flask with distilled water, drawn by a siphon from a carboy 



