Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/719

Rh Jean Senebier, "Opuscules de Physique, Animale et Végétale," the translation itself having been published at Geneva in 1767.

Reflecting upon the import of the experiments of his own that he had just recorded, in which living organisms were found in closed vessels containing infusions of certain vegetable seeds after these closed vessels had been immersed in boiling water for half, or, in some cases, nearly three-quarters of an hour, Spallanzani frankly avows (p. 48) that if the first of the new organisms had not come into being by some such independent method as that suggested by Needham, they must have appeared either because certain "germs" from which they had been derived had been able to resist the destructive influence of boiling water for nearly three-quarters of an hour, or because, after the cooling of the closed vessels, some of the organisms observed had passed from the air through certain imaginary pores of the glass. At the first glance these seemed, as he says, "deux suppositions également impossibles, ou du moins très difficiles à concevoir." For very excellent reasons, not difficult for the reader to imagine, the abbé then points out that the latter hypothesis, at all events, is entirely untenable. The question thus became one of the simplest description. If no good reason could be found in support of the seemingly improbable supposition that the experimental results referred to were to be accounted for by a survival of germs, then, as he confessed, he must admit the fact of an independent and germless origin of living things. If, on the other hand, it should appear probable that germs or reproductive particles of living things could survive the influence of such a prolonged immersion in boiling fluids, he would not feel at all bound on the strength of his previous experiments to believe in the independent origin of living matter. This simple issue was fully realized by Spallanzani, and, acting in accordance with the most obvious of scientific principles, he carefully sought for fresh evidence by means of well-directed experiments, in order to guide him toward a conclusion as to whether germs of living things could or could not have resisted the action of boiling water for more than half an hour.

He approached the question in the following manner: "Can one," he says, "find any proof sufficient to banish, or, at all events, to diminish one's natural repugnance to admit that the germs of animalcules of the lowest order have the power of resisting the action of boiling water? In reasoning from the germs or eggs of animals with which we are acquainted, would it be difficult for us to imagine animalcules having this peculiarity? It is true that we are not acquainted with any eggs endowed with such properties. I have already considered this subject in the ninth chapter of my Dissertation. I there show how several kinds of eggs of insects—not to speak of eggs of birds—perish under a heat less than that of boiling water. I have shown also that the seeds of plants are destroyed when they are exposed to the heat of boiling water, and that even those whose outer coat is of the