DU. W. ROBERTS ON BIOGENESIS. 
477 
microscope the little masses were found to consist of an interlacement of fibres, exactly 
resembling the mycelium of the Penicilium glaucum or of the sugar-fungus, except 
that the fibres had only about half the diameter of the former. In structure the fibres 
more resembled those of the sugar-fungus than those of the Penicilium glaucum , for 
they had globular enlargements on them here and there. Amid these fibres were 
innumerable very minute spores, much smaller than the Torulce usually found in urine. 
I could not clearly make out any aerial fructification. No Bacteria were found. 
Several other specimens of albuminous urine treated in the same way were found 
wholly barren at the end of eighteen months. 
2. February 25, 1873. — A plugged bulb, containing pieces of Swedish turnip, 
floating in water alkalized with 0 2 per cent, of sod. bicarb., was boiled in a can of 
water for thirty minutes. When cold the neck was filed off above the cotton-wool, and 
the bulb was placed in a warm greenhouse. On the 7th of March the supernatant 
liquid had become turbid, but on the 21st of March it had again become perfectly 
transparent, and an immense woolly growth had rapidly sprung from the surface of the 
liquid and filled up the entire upper part of the bulb, even extending into its neck. 
Under the microscope this woolly mass was found to consist of an interlacement of fibres 
exactly resembling the mycelium of the Penicilium glaucum. Amid the fibres were 
numerous minute dots like very young Torulce. There was no proper aerial fructifi- 
cation. No Bacteria were found. 
In both these instances the organisms evidently belonged to the class of fungoid 
vegetations represented by the Penicilium glaucum and the sugar-fungus. But their 
mode of growth was so entirely different, that it was equally evident that they were not 
identical with either of those species, and, further, that they were totally different from 
each other. These were the only two instances, out of many hundred experiments, in 
which I witnessed the development of a fungoid vegetation in a liquid which had been 
exposed, for however short a time, to the heat of boiling water. 
The facts just enumerated are far too few, and of too exceptional a character, to permit 
a deduction in favour of abiogenesis ; but they certainly impose a reserve which is 
highly significant. If future investigations should establish the occurrence of abio- 
genesis, this would not overturn the panspermic theory, it would only limit its univer- 
sality ; and it may be predicted with some confidence that if abiogenesis exist the con- 
ditions of its occurrence can only be determined by an inquirer who is fully alive to the 
truth and penetrating consequences of the panspermic theory. 
3 s 
MDCCCLXXIV. 
