Romance of low life amongst plants : facts and phenomena of cryptogamic vegetation / by M.C. Cooke.

  • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
Date:
1893
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Romance of low life amongst plants : facts and phenomena of cryptogamic vegetation / by M.C. Cooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the question was not satisfactorily disposed of; but reappeared w]‘th renewed vigour when two eminent Frenchmen, Pouchet and Pasteur, came forward as the champions on either side. This was a long and hotly contested duel, which was watched with intense interest throughout Europe. M. Pasteur verified a number of experiments, criticized and condemned others, and, above all, demonstrated the weaknesses of M. Pouchet’s methods, and succeeded in putting his opponent in the wrong. The position at this point is thus summarized by Professor Huxley1: “Not content with explaining the experiments of others, M. Pasteur went to work to satisfy himself completely. He said to himself, ‘ If my view is right, and if, in point of fact, all these appearances of spontaneous generation are altogether due to the falling of minute germs suspended in the atmosphere,—why, I ought not only to be able to show the germs, but I ought to be able to catch and sow them, and produce the resulting organisms.’ He accordingly constructed a very ingenious appa- ratus to enable him to accomplish the trapping of the ‘germ dust’ in the air. He fixed in the window of his room a glass tube, in the centre of which he had placed a ball of gun-cotton, which, as we all know, is ordinary cotton-wool, which from having been steeped in strong acid, is converted into a sub- stance of great explosive power. It is also soluble in alcohol and ether. One end of the glass tube was, of course, open to the external air; and, at the other 1 Professor Huxley, “ On our Knowledge of the Causes of the Pheno- mena of Organic Nature,” p. 77. (1863).