Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/533

Rh thus find that some of the conditions are merely accidental circumstances, having no necessary connection with the phenomenon, while others are its invariable antecedent. Having now discovered the true relations of the phenomenon we are studying, a happy guess, suggested probably by analogy, furnishes us with a clew to the real causes on which it depends. We next test our guess by further experiments. If our hypothesis is true, this or that must follow; and, if in all points the theory holds, we have discovered the law of which we are in search. If, however, these necessary inferences are not realized, then we must abandon our hypothesis, make another guess, and test that in its turn. Let me illustrate by two well-known examples:

The, of old, universally accepted principle that all living organisms are propagated by seeds or germs (omnia ex ovo) has been seriously questioned by a modern school of naturalists. Various observers have maintained that there were conditions under which the lower forms of organic life were developed independently of all such accessories, but other, and equally competent, naturalists who have attempted to investigate the subject, have obtained conflicting results. Thus it was observed that certain low forms of life were quite constantly developed in beef-juice that had been carefully prepared and hermetically sealed in glass flasks, even after these flasks had been exposed for a long time to the temperature of boiling water. "Here," proclaims the new school, "is unmistakable evidence of spontaneous generation; for, if past experience is any guide, all germs must have been killed by the boiling water." "No," answer the more cautious naturalists, "you have not yet proved your point. You have no right to assume that all germs are killed at this temperature." The experiments, therefore, were repeated under various conditions and at different temperatures, but with unsatisfactory results, until Pasteur, a distinguished French physicist, devised a very simple mode of testing the question. He reasoned thus: "If, as is generally believed, the presence of invisible spores in the air is an essential condition of the development of these lower growths, then their production must bear some proportion to the abundance of these spores. Near the habitations of animals and plants, where the spores are known to be in abundance, the development would be naturally at a maximum, and we should expect that the growth would diminish in proportion as the microscope indicated that the spores diminished in the atmosphere." Accordingly, Pasteur selected a region in the Jura Mountains suitable for his purpose, and repeated the well-known experiment with beef-juice, first at the inn of a town at the foot of the mountains, and then at various elevations up to the bare rocks which covered the top of the ridge, a height of some 8,000 feet. At each point he sealed up beef-juice in a large number of flasks and watched the result. He found that while in the town the animalcules were developed in almost all the flasks, they appeared