these reasoners do not say, though some of them are cautious about openly suggesting an antecedent and protective state of extreme desiccation in the face of Dr. Sanderson's experiments proving that this would be in itself destructive. The futility of this reasoning has, however, been completely demonstrated by the fact that organisms will occur just as freely under conditions where no such objection can be alleged, that is, when the vessel and its contents are heated by submergence in boiling water, after it has been hermetically sealed—a mode of heating that has been occasionally adopted by different experimenters since the time of Spallanzani.
(c.) The third objection raised is no less remarkable, owing to its being similarly brought forward as an unsupported supposition in the face of much other evidence testifying to its nullity. When the writer's earlier experiments were first recorded, the public was authoritatively told by Prof. Huxley that the results were unworthy of credence, because the fact that tons of meats and vegetables were annually preserved from putrefaction by a very similar process was in itself the strongest evidence that he had in some manner deceived himself. It was never suggested or thought of, therefore, at this time, that such moist meats and vegetables were incapable of being heated through, even when pounds of them were aggregated together. It was, in fact, implicitly said that they could be so heated, and the fact of the preservation of the meats and vegetables was itself deemed to be the best evidence that all germs contained in their interior had been killed. Now that the writer has demonstrated to unbelievers, and when others have ascertained for themselves, that organisms are to be met with and that putrefaction will occur within almost airless and hermetically-sealed flasks whose contents have been previously boiled, the tactics of these unbelievers are entirely changed. Forgetting altogether their previous objection upon which they relied so long as they doubted the writer's facts, they now advance the interpretation of his results, which must carry with it its own stultification to the minds of those who have not entirely forgotten their previous position. The writer's methods are declared to be faulty for not freeing his infusions from all particles, however minute and however soft. The oracles now shake their heads, and talk with apparent learning about "the protective influence of lumps." While heat was previously supposed to be capable of operating as a germ-killer through pots of meats and vegetables, and while it has been proved to act in the same way through the thick and dry envelopes of seeds, now a pea or a minute particle of cheese, even though smaller than a pin's head, is thought to exercise a "protective influence" over imaginary germs! Such puerilities may safely be left to die a natural death, though it may be as well to remind those who trust to them, that, although they do not put their notions to the test of direct experiment, others have, for certain practical reasons, had occasion to do so. Dr.
