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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
properties, and a discovery by patient research of the life- 
history of the organism. 
The valueless nature of mere temperature experiments on 
such organisms, as tests of their ability to survive, without a 
knowledge of their life-history, Dr. Bastian, without knowing 
it , has made sufficiently plain. He gives a brilliant illustration 
— styled by himself 46 typical ” — of the futility of his own 
method. Consider the facts. 
In our “ Researches ” on the monads, my colleague and myself 
made it a special point to institute a series of investigations on 
the points of temperature which the adults, and the spore, of 
each form studied could resist. The results were as unexpected 
as they w r ere remarkable. Only the results can here he stated. 
Taking the spore-sacs of the several forms in the order in 
which our illustration gives them, the data are as follow — viz. 
fig. 1 survived after exposure to 250° F. ; figs. 2 and 4, 300° F. ; 
fig. 3 (which produced living young), 180° F. ; figs. 5 and 6, 
250° F. That is to say, the spore, after the heating to the 
above-named temperatures , were followed step by step until they 
reached the parent condition. The adults of each form were 
absolutely destroyed at from 130° to 140° F. Thus, if all the 
examples he taken together, it will be seen that on the average 
the spore have a capacity to resist heat better than the adult in 
the proportion of 11 to 6. This is surely important. 
Now, until Dr. Bastian’s promised “new results”* have 
appeared, I believe I am justified in affirming that the strongest 
cases on which even he relies for “ spontaneous generation ” are 
recorded on pp. 175-180 of his “Evolution and the Origin of 
Life.” They are thus introduced : — “ After this I may, perhaps, 
be deemed fully justified in quoting two very typical experi- 
ments for the further consideration of those who stave off the 
belief in spontaneous generation — either by relying on insuffi- 
cient reasons for doubting the influence of boiling water, or 
because of their following Pasteur, Cohn, and others in sup- 
posing that certain peculiar bacteria germs are not killed except 
by a brief exposure to a heat of 227° or 230° F. For even if 
we could grant them these limits, of what avail would the- 
concession be .... in the face of the following experiments ? 
The details of the experiments follow. They are alike in method, 
and we will concern ourselves only with the second. A strong 
infusion of common cress, with a few of the leaves and stalks of 
the plants, were inclosed in a flask, which was hermetically 
sealed while the fluid within was boiling. It was then intro- 
duced into a digester and gradually heated, and afterwards kept 
at a temperature of 270-275° F. for twenty minutes, and was 
Vide “Times,” Jan. 29, 1876. 
