Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/249

Rh mineral matters that can feed the plant, as I have directly demonstrated. You have, moreover, not carefully examined the surface of the chips with the microscope. If you had, you would have seen the little articles of the Mycoderma aceti, sometimes joined into an extremely thin pellicle that may be lifted off. If you will send me some chips from the factory at Munich, selected by yourself in the presence of its director, I will, after drying them quickly in a stove, show the mycoderm on their surface to a committee of the Academy charged with the determination of this debate." Liebig did not accept the challenge, but the question involved has been decided.

The experiments in fermentation led by natural steps to the debate on spontaneous generation, in which Pasteur was destined to settle a question that had interested men ever since they lived. The theory that life originates spontaneously from dead matter had strong advocates, among the most earnest of whom was M. Pouchet. He made a very clear presentment of the question at issue, saying: "The adversaries of spontaneous generation assume that the germs of microscopic beings exist in the air and are carried by it to considerable distances. Well! what will they say if I succeed in producing a generation of organized beings after an artificial air has been substituted for that of the atmosphere? "Then he proceeded with an experiment in which all his materials and vessels seemed to have been cleansed of all germs that might possibly have existed in them. In eight days a mold appeared in the infusion, which had been put boiling-hot into the boiling-hot medium." Where did the mold come from," asked M. Pouchet, triumphantly, "if it was not spontaneously developed?" "Yes," said M. Pasteur, in the presence of an enthusiastic audience, for Paris had become greatly excited on the subject, "the experiment has been performed in an irreproachable manner as to all the points that have attracted the attention of the author; but I will show that there is one cause of error that M. Pouchet has not perceived, that he has not thought of, and no one else has thought of, which makes his experiment wholly illusory. He used mercury in his tub, without purifying it, and I will show that that was capable of collecting dust from the air and introducing it to his apparatus." Then he let a beam of light into the darkened room, and showed the air full of floating dust. He showed that the mercury had been exposed to atmospheric dust ever since it came from the mine, and was so impregnated and covered with it as to be liable to soil everything with which it came in contact. He instituted experiments similar to those of M. Pouchet, but with all the causes of error that had escaped him removed, and no life appeared. The debate, which continued through many months, and was diversified by a variety of experiments and counter-experiments, was marked by a number of dramatic passages and drew the attention of the world. M. Pasteur detected a flaw in every one of M. Pouchet's successful experiments, and followed each one with a more exact experiment of his