The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-16


som, ow or other be explained away, toge-
ther With the analogous results of Wyman,
Msutegazza, and CsntoHi. If these are sound
exp timents, free from any error that can be
as>'gHed, they are not met by the fact that
PssIeur and others, though working under
less stringent conditions, and with sub
stances presumably more favorable to the
production of life, nevertheless failed again
and again to discover a trace of living mat
ter. Professor Huxley thought it enough,
in bis address, to dispose of all the modern
experimenters whose results differed from
Pssteur's, by saying that there might be some
error. Undoubtedly there may be error in
the experiments of any man, especially upon
such a subject, and the moral which unpre-
JUDGED minds would draw is not that all the
evidence on one side is to be disregarded,
but that it will be well to suspend ones
judgment until other Investigators have re-
peated the process with analogous or discord-
ant results, as the case may be.
But Professor Huxley has in a recently
published letter given his Interpretation of
these extraordinary experiments, and the
question is now reduced to the srrowest and
simplest issue in the world. Dr. Bastian be-
lieves that he saw organisms which grew in
the solutions after all life had been destroyed
by the heat to which they had been
subjected. Professor Huxley believes that
what was seen in the microscope
consisted merely of impurities in
the original solutions which had sustained
the heat applied to them and retained the
forms which DIR. Bastian has figured. Ger
tainly in the absence of experiment to justify
it this seems an hypothesis of portentous diff
fculty. Has it ever been shown that it is
possible for such things as are drawn in the
figure we have referred to, to say nothing of
the other experiments, to escape disintegra-
ton under temperature of @. 1902 The
experiment has been tried Professor Frank
land has repeated his process upon flask in
which was a fluid containing spores and o
fungus as nearly like those in the i'm
| pugned experiment as DR.. Bastiau could
procure. When examined in the microscope,
! DR.. Bastian, as might have been expected,
found them utterly disintegrated. Unless
Professor Huxley can reverse this last expert
ment, his explanation of the former series of
results must be wrong, though it by no means
follows that DR.. Bastian is right 1t is quite
conceivable that closer investigation may ex-
plain these results without either admitting
the doctrine of spontaneous generation, or
the equally astonishing theory of Professor
Huxley as to the power of resisting heat pos
sessed by delicate fungi and their spores. At
present we cannot guess whether such an ex-
planation will be discovered, or, if SO, what
it will be. We wait for thu repetition by in
dependent inquirers of DR.. Bastian's expert
here we would leave the sub
feet had not Professor Huxley used
one more argument the motive of
which is more apparent than it's point. He
tells US that, in an unpublished experiment
privately exhibited to himself, DIR. Bastian
had allowed fragment of sphagnum leaf to
get into the solution, and that when it ap-
peared in the field of the microscope it was
some time before he could be brought to re-
| cOopisa it Evan IL thia circu r,Sta had
been less irrelevant than it seems to us
as affecting DR.. Bastiau's conclusions, it
would still leave the results of Wyman, Man.
tegazza, and Cantoni unimpeached and un-
answered. But even as to DIR. Bastian, what
does the sphagnum story prove? Simply that
dead foreign matter, capable of standing a
temperature of @. 150 might fairly be looked
for in any of the specimens examined, and
moreover that sphagnum was tough enough
to SURVIVE the ordeal. But how does that
touch the question, unless Professor Huxley
is prepared to day and to prove that such
things as DR.. Bastian and DR.. Sharpey saw
were matter of this description? The
point relied on throughout the investi
cation was, not the exclusion of foreign mat
ter, but the destruction of vitality; and the
force of the experiments would be in no way
weakened if DIR. Bastian had never seer
sphagnum in his life. Like many greater
men, DR.. Bastian no doubt made blundel
when he failed 10 recognise common enough
object. But Professor Huxley committed
greater blnnder in the use he made of hi
sdversary's slip-a blunder, we may add, 81
little in his manner as to encourage the hop,
that it may remain unique OF all men il
the world Professor Huxley is surely the las
who would wish to substitute authority fo
experiments, or desire to crush an opponen
whom he fails, we think, to answer.