Evolution and the origin of life / by H. Charlton Bastian.

  • Henry Charlton Bastian
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution and the origin of life / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    182/214 page 164
    Having no grounds for criticising these observations, we are bound to look upon them, provisionally at least, as correct and taken with all due care—though it is only fair to add that both Max Schultze and Cohn appear to be not altogether satisfied with some statements of the same kind.* Such instances, if thoroughly accurate, may perhaps be taken as examples of the highest temperature that it is possible for living matter to endure, even where it has been inured to the influence of heat in the most gradual manner. And the real point of view from which such facts should be regarded is pointed out by Professor Wyman when he says : Having become adapted through a long series of years to their surroundings, such organisms may be supposed to live under circumstances the most favourable possible for sustaining life at a high temperature. It is a well-known physiological fact, that living beings may be slowly transferred to new and widely different conditions without injury; but if the same change is suddenly made they perish. In the experiments made in our laboratories, the change of conditions is relatively violent, and there- fore liable to destroy life by its suddenness. Hence it is that a considerably lower temperature than that of the springs above mentioned suffices to kill all * See Max Schultze, Das Protoplasma, Leipzig, 1863, p. 67.
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