EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
659 
by any one* carries conviction to unprejudiced minds. It 
gives also peculiar interest to the proof which it presents to 
us. that there is nothing in the air except its dust, which is a 
condition of organization. It thus appears that oxygen acts 
only to sustain life furnished by germs, while of gas, fluids, 
electricity, magnetism, ozone, things known or unknown, 
there is nothing in the air except the germs w T hich it carries 
which can originate organic life.'* 
M. Pasteur proceeded in the same way with other fluids, as 
urine and milk, and in different localities—for it is not our 
intention to give all the details of those elaborate experi¬ 
ments—and found corresponding results to follow, and 
from the whole he considers the following to be satisfactorily 
demonstrated: 
“ 1. That the air of inhabited places contains a greater 
relative number of fruitful germs than the air of uninhabited 
regions. 
et 2. That the ordinary air contains only here and there, 
without any continuity, the condition of the first existence 
of generations sometimes considered spontaneous. Here 
there are germs and there there are none. 
“ 3. There are few or many, according to the localities. 
Rain diminishes the number; but after a succession of fine 
days they are more numerous. Where the atmosphere has 
been for a long time quiet germs are wanting, and putre¬ 
faction does not take place as in ordinary circumstances. 
“ Gay Lussac, Schwann, and Pouchet haye performed 
various experiments upon liquids in contact with common 
air, w T ith heated air, with artificial air, and with oxygen gas, 
using a mercurial bath to isolate the substances experimented 
upon. Some of their results have appeared to favour the 
theory of spontaneous generation. Pasteur has ascertained 
that mercury taken from the bath in any laboratory is itself 
loaded with organic germs. He took a globule of mercury, 
surrounded by an atmosphere of calcined air, and passed it 
into a flask of putrescible fluid by the process detailed in the 
former part of this paper. In every experiment of this kind 
after two days an abundant growth of organic products 
appeared. 
“ The same experiments were repeated with the same 
liquids, with no change of manipulation, with the same kind 
of mercury, except that the mercury was first heated to 
destroy the germs it contained, and no growths whatever 
appeared in the flasks. 
