vi Obituary Notices of Felloios deceased. 



resistance showed that organic solutions, which had been thought to be sterile- 

 because they had been boiled, often contained living spores which had survived 

 the heat and were capable of starting fresh colonies of flagellates. In connection 

 with this part of his scientific researches was the remarkable series of 

 experiments by means of which he was able to habituate successive generations 

 of Ballingeria drysdalci and other forms to gradually increasing higher 

 temperatures. From a temperature of 60° F. at which these flagellates 

 normally live, he gradually raised the solution to that of 158° F. At this 

 heat, which is at once fatal to the normal animals not habituated to high 

 temperatures, the animals lived and multiplied, differing from the original 

 stock chiefly in the marked vacuolation of the protoplasm. He felt that these 

 experiments weighed against the position Weismann had taken up on the non- 

 inheritance of acquired characters, and argument did not shake him. He was 

 intensely preoccupied m his work and gave his contemporaries the impression 

 of profound earnestness in all he undertook, combined with a little absence of 

 business method. Before leaving this short record of Dallinger's contributions 

 to the advancement of learning it is well to recall the honest and the truly 

 scientific spirit which animated both his rcsearches and his writings. This is 

 admirably expressed in his own words : — " Let truth come from whence it may,, 

 and point never so grimly to where it may, he would be recreant to science 

 who would for one moment hesitate to receive it. But no less false is it to^ 

 the foundation principles of true science, to accept as true, what must 

 constitute the roots of vast generalisations, except on evidence which no future- 

 scrutiny or analysis can shake."* 



A. E. S. 



* 'Jour, of the Roy. Mic. Soc.,' vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 16 (1880). 



