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observations in relation to the lowest organic types which I unhesitatingly 
declare to be fictions. I have over and over again endeavoured to direct 
public attention to the serious character of the errors in this department of 
natural history committed by Haeckel and those who are his advertisers aDd 
supporters. But authority, and the arrogant claim to infallibility put 
forward by those who rank as leaders in science, completely block the way 
to enlightenment wherever it interferes with their dogmas. And yet it 
stands on record that Haeckel, and those who think with him, hold the 
doctrine of evolution to be incomplete without Spontaneous Generation for 
its basis. Whereas the pure Darwinian doctrine — in which I implicitly 
believe— authorises no such retrogressive application, and, above all, re- 
pudiates any connexion with metaphysical speculations. I would here 
mention that I make this statement because I am in possession of indisput- 
able evidence that Mr. Darwin regarded such an application of the doctrine 
of evolution as altogether ultra vires in the present state of our knowledge ; 
and moreover maintained, from first to last, that no testimony deserving of 
credence had as yet been adduced in support of Spontaneous Generation.* 
Nevertheless, Haeckel and the rest of those who have made Spontaneous 
Generation the basis of a materialistic hypothesis of creation, are the very 
persons who, amidst the plaudits of a wonder-stricken public, proclaimed 
in 1869 the discovery of “ Bathybius" extending in one continuous 
living sheet over hundreds of thousands of square miles of the ocean 
bed, and were not ashamed to pass off this monstrous fiction as a 
determinate fact in “Exact Science”! No wonder they shrink from 
affording those who contest their views any opportunity of exposing 
their worthlessness. From 1868, when the discovery of Bathybius was 
first announced, till 1874 when its funeral dirge was pronounced in 
significant but strangely halting whispers by the naturalists on board 
the “ Challenger,” I stood alone in denouncing it as a fiction based on 
a reckless misinterpretation of the nature of a substance which is the 
effete product , and not a living embodiment of the lowest conceivable type 
of animal life. What the naturalists of the “ Challenger” achieved and let 
the world know, after groping about the bottom of every sea and ocean 
* “ The recent searching investigations of Professor Tyndall, Dr. Burdon 
Sanderson, Professor Lister, and others, have forcibly shown that there is 
no reliable foundation for the theory of ‘spontaneous generation,’ or as 
it is now more logically termed, ‘ abiogenesis,’ i.e. the development of life 
without any influence derived from pre-existing life. Professor Lister has 
recently shown that the lactic acid fermentation of milk (the ordinary pro- 
cess of turning sour) does not take place without the presence of a peculiar 
organism ; of which, if the invisible germs be excluded, the milk remains 
sweet for an almost indefinite period of time. And Professor Tyndall has 
observed that, if fluids the most prone to decomposition and the develop- 
ment of organic life be carefully exposed to the pure air wafted over the 
snow-clad summits of the Alps, they undergo no change.” — Preface , Trans- 
actions of Victoria Institute , Vol. XI. — M. Pasteur’s investigations have 
had a similar result to those of the above-named. — (E d.) 
