232 
Analyses of Books. 
[April, 
task. Did we not see him, in a work noticed in this very number 
of the “Journal of Science,” denounced as a “ ghoul ?” We are 
glad, therefore, to find him and his achievements here pourtrayed 
in non-technical language. _ ...... . . n 
The present edition of M. Radot’s biography of his illustrious 
father-in-law is rendered more valuable by an introduction from 
the pen of Professor Tyndall. . 
The leading ideas which Pasteur has followed out in his mani- 
fold researches are the old dodtrine omnia ex ovo and the part 
played by minute organisms in the changes both of animate and 
inanimate matter. His studies have therefore led him into the 
border-land of the two sciences, biology and chemistry,— a region 
which he has proved to be indeed fruitful. It need scarcely be 
said that he has been the most persevering and successful oppo- 
nent of so-called “ equivocal generation,”— the origin of life with- 
out antecedent life. In not a few cases where previous experi- 
mentalists believed that they had succeeded in producing minute 
organisms from lifeless matter, Pasteur has been able to find 
some capital flaw in the modus operand i. Experiments in the 
same direaion have been performed with every precaution by 
Prof Tyndall, and with negative results. Microscopists such as 
Dr. Dallinger and Dr. Drysdale have further shown that the 
germs of plants and animals may survive temperatures far ex- 
ceeding that of boiling water, and may exist where observers 
less acute and patient found merely a lifeless void. But we may 
even say that the crucial experiment is being daily performed by 
commerce on a vast scale. If microbia were capable of origin- 
ating spontaneously from organic matter we should see the tins 
of Australian meat and other preserved esculents arrive swarming 
with life and in a flourishing state of decomposition. But this is 
not the case except some flaw in the soldering has admitted the 
air, and with the air the germs or spores which are very rarely. 
absent. _ . . 
Studies like these naturally led Pasteur to scrutinise the 
boundary line — if so it may be called — between the organic and 
the inorganic worlds. For whilst he has been so adtive in 
showing that man has not yet succeeded in producing artificially 
either living beings or the substances essential to organic life, he 
has nowhere, to our knowledge, proclaimed such a result im- 
possible. On the contrary, he has even thrown out suggestions 
how this task may be attempted. His contention is that organic 
products are “ atomically dissymmetric,” — this dissymmetry 
bein°- shown in their power of turning the plane of polarised light. 
Mineral matter, on the other hand, and the secondary produces 
of organisms — such as those which have been artificially pro- 
duced in our laboratories, urea, oxalic acid, &c. have no adtion 
on polarised light. He maintains that “ the forces which are 
present and aftive at the moment when the grain sprouts, when 
the egg develops, and when under the influence of the sun the 
