^SSilmTiS?] Spontaneous Generation. 267 
or water in washing. The mackerel from which the piece was 
taken was brought directly from the oven, cooked, ready for eating. 
The vessel was kept carefully covered from the first, so that nothing 
should fall into it. Some boiling water was poured upon the piece 
of fish to the depth of about an inch ; this was then stood on the 
top of the kitchen hot-plate, which, I must say, was nearly red- 
hot ; it was left in this position for nearly an hour, when I con- 
sidered it had had quite cooking enough. It was then left to cool ; 
and it was all this time kept carefully covered with stout paper, and 
tied down. At six o'clock I examined some of the oleaginous cells 
in the thin pellicle that had formed on the surface. Some of the 
cells were round, others ovate or elliptical ; the latter showed two 
very dark bands, one broad one near the middle, and the other near 
one end (Fig. 23). At this time I could not discover any hfe in 
the vessel ; at the same time, I do not say it was not there. 
At nine o'clock the next morning the whole infusion was a mass 
of life. Every particle that had been liberated in the cooking and 
heating afterwards, and they were very numerous, appeared to me to 
be endowed with life, that is if we are to regard animated microscopic 
matter endowed with voluntary motion as containing the property 
termed life. They appear only as animated cells, some of which 
were spherical, and others elliptical ; the latter had each a central 
nucleus, like a well-defined ring, the centre of which was trans- 
parent. The spherical bodies measured from g^oVoth to yrioiyth 
of an"^ inch in diameter, and were what I believe are called Monas 
crejpusculum (Fig. 24). 
The fibre of which the flesh of the mackerel is composed, when 
highly magnified, is seen to be transversely striated, very much like 
the fibrilla of muscle alluded to before. These fibrillae break up, 
where these transverse striae are observed, into minute elliptical 
discs or cells ; and it appeared to me that directly they were set 
free they moved away with a very rapid motion, the same as the 
little monas mentioned above. 
The oleaginous cells have not been less active, for some of these 
had by the 10th developed a vegetable growth of a very similar 
character to the leptomitus in the liver ; but it was not the same 
(Fig. 25). In one cell will be observed another plant beginning 
to grow ; it has not yet penetrated the walls of the cell (Fig. 26). 
I could not in this, or any others, discover anything like a vegetable 
cell, or sporule, and the growths always seem to me to spring from 
one side. 
There were immense numbers of spherical oil-cells in the pellicle, 
and many of them had arranged themselves into little moniliform 
masses. These oil-cells are provided with double coats, the inner 
one reflecting a beautiful purple colour. 
There were also great numbers of elliptical cells imbedded in 
