256 
Exjperiments on 
TMonthly Microscopical 
L Journal, Nov. 1, 1869. 
" Force so combined with force as to produce certain definite and 
orderly results : this is the ultimate fact of all discovery." * 
Mr. Browning, in 'Transactions of the Eoyal Microscopical 
Society' for July 1, p. 18, says: — "There are probably some 
grounds for believing that the particles or molecules in magnets 
are always in motion ; " and, he says, " Mr. Wenham once told 
him that he had seen a cavity in a crystal ^partially filled with 
a fluid, and for several years this fluid had been unceasingly in 
motion, although completely shut off from the surrounding atmo- 
sphere. Motion, then," he says, " is not peculiar to life ; and we 
shall be brought at last to the single distinction — reproduction." 
In this I fully concur, as I had arrived at the same conclusion, as 
before stated. Mr. Browning goes on to say, curiously enough, in 
the very next sentence, that what he had just approved is not true, 
and cannot be accepted ; for, he says, " The difficulty here would 
be insuperable, if we were compelled to accept the hypothesis that 
life is transmitted from one organism to another. But this 
hypothesis is no longer generally accepted. Professor Owen, who 
has been until recently opposed to such views, has at length 
accepted the hypothesis of spontaneous generation." This passage, 
I think, would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer. 
The term "spontaneous generation," although it expresses a 
certain meaning, I think is not admissible ; although we see things 
apparently springing into life where no life appeared to exist, 
yet in a few hours every molecule is a moving, living body. In 
this light it seems to me more like suspended animation ; and that 
every molecule, directly it is set free, is seen dancing about in the 
infusion, like gnats in the sunbeams, and apparently as full of 
the enjoyment of hfe. And it would also seem as if an organism 
was composed of an infinite number of these, and that, when set 
free, they returned to their original conditions ; for the great variety 
of both animal (or what we believe to be animal) and vegetable 
forms, which are developed in a single infusion of either animal or 
other organic matter, would almost warrant us in believing such to 
be the case ; but at present it would not be prudent to venture so far. 
Again, when we examine our infusions, whether they be made 
with vegetable or animal, we detect life, or what we believe to be 
life (and not mechanical force), in the most minute points or mole- 
cules that our instruments enable us to observe ; and why I beheve 
this motion to be life is, that we see the molecules in different 
stages of development. At the same time I am fully aware that 
motion does not distinguish an animal from a vegetable, as many 
plants are endowed with that property. 
The most minute and searching microscopic investigations have 
availed us but little in the elucidation of the mysteries of life. One 
* Duke of Argyll ; ' Reign of Law,' p. 81. 
