disappearance of prejudices, as the recommendation of the noble Duke in regard to changes and modifications in forms of worship. I have been unwilling in this article to enter into much detail, lest I should appear to take upon myself more than my position warrants; and I have also wished that my argument should stand simply upon its own merits. It is for the members of the General Assembly rather than for us to answer questions such as that proposed by Lord Kinloch. They are now masters of the situation; having received it, however, not by any authority of the spiritualty, but solely by the action of the civil power, which formerly deprived us,20 and is now to be invited to deprive them of it. Under these circumstances it cannot be doubted that many of our body will be tempted, as I have said, to espouse the cause of Voluntaryism; and all the more because the Scottish branch of the Liberation Society has announced its intention of so far modifying its programme as to abandon, for the present at least, all aggression against the Church of England, and to confine its exertions solely to the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. How then is this temptation to be effectually met? Only, as I believe, in the way which my argument has pointed out. But I may be asked: Even if we accept what the Duke of Argyll has said, as possibly applicable in the way that you suggest, will there not still be obstacles to be met which are insurmountable-more especially such as must arise, on the one side, out of the question of Ordination; and on the other side, out of the provisions of the Act of Security, incorporated into the treaty of Union? I answer, those obstacles are doubtless great-like the great and momentous issues which depend upon the result- but they are not, to the eye of faith and to the arm of charity, insurmountable: no, not more insurmountable, in the former instance, than were the obstacles which, in order to heal a long-standing separation, the African Church removed in the case of the Donatists: 21 not more insurmountable, in the latter instance, than the obstacles which, in order to secure great national benefits, our legislature removed by the Act of 1853 (which released non-theological professors at our universities from the tests previously required under the Act of Security), and again by the Education Act of 1872.22 We may also remember, for our en The Papal or Romish Episcopacy (of Vicars Apostolic in partibus infidelium) which is now to be superseded by a regular hierarchy of two Archbishops and four Suffragans, dates from the appointment of Dr. Thomas Nicholson in 1694-only five years after King William had disestablished-very unwillingly, according to Burton -our Reformed Episcopacy, because our then Bishops (in a mistaken sense of duty, as we must now think) decided upon casting in their lot with the English Nonjurors, and refused to accept the Revolution settlement. "See Bingham's Antiq. Book iv. ch. vii. 7; Robertson's Church Hist. ii. 131, 134; Pearson's Life of Leighton, p. lxx.; Thorndike's Works, i. p. 501 sq.; Grub's Eccles. Hist. iii. 218. See Taylor Innes' Law of Creeds, p. 123. couragement, how great were the difficulties which had to be overcome, and how they arose from mistaken prejudice mainly on the Scottish side, which eventually was to gain most from the result (as was shown by Lord Rosebery in his talented address at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution some years ago) before the patriotic enterprise for the union of the two kingdoms was finally achieved at the beginning of the last century. May we not then be permitted to express a hope that, notwithstanding similar or even greater difficulties to be apprehended from the same cause, the present century will not close before it has witnessed a still more precious benefit conferred upon both countries in the union or reconciliation, for all practical purposes, of our two Church Establishments? The former measure adorned and blessed the reign of Queen Anne. May the latter shed still brighter lustre, and bring down a still higher blessing, upon the reign of Queen Victoria! CHARLES WORDSWORTH, Bishop of St. Andrews. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION: THE results of some years of labour, on my part, in connection with the subject of spontaneous generation are set forth in the two memoirs published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1876 and 1877. But by conversation and correspondence with various physicians and surgeons of eminence I was made aware that the further exposition and elucidation of two or three leading points was desirable, and to this task I addressed myself in the January number of this Review. This has drawn forth in the February number a 'reply,' in which it is intimated that my article deals in denunciation.' Of that the reader will judge for himself, my desire being that demonstration, rather than denunciation, should form the staple of the article. I am also spoken of as commenting in terms of severe reprobation on the writer's temerity in differing from M. Pasteur. On this point I take the opportunity of remarking that had the 'temerity' referred to been the outcome of true courage, and fidelity to scientific conviction, I should have been the first to applaud the writer's dissent from Pasteur, Huxley, and the other able men with whom he has come into collision; but I could not applaud the turning of a momentous discussion into a mere dialectic wrangle, nor could I approve of the systematic abandonment of that courtesy of language which befits the neophyte in the presence of the master. Science, as a moral agent, is affected by the spirit in which it is pursued, and the man, who at the entrance of his career discharges from his mind all reverence for those whose reputations have been established by the successful disciplines of laborious lives, is not likely to win applause from me. To justice, however, my respondent is entitled, and I begin these remarks by an act of justice towards him. He complains that I speak of the vital resistance of the seeds of Medicago as if he had not been aware of the fact, and points out, to use his own words, 'that the facts newly discovered by Professor Tyndall, which were to invalidate my views were, with others, nearly five years ago, referred to by me.' I turn to vol. i., page 314, of his Beginnings of Life, and there, it must be admitted, is a reference to Pouchet's experiment. The observation referred to astonished Pouchet himself. At first he would not believe the statements of those who informed him that the seeds of Medicago could resist four hours' boiling. Ce fait extraordinaire était tellement en opposition avec ce que professent les physiologistes les plus éminents de notre époque, que je n'y pouvais croire.' Spallanzani had distinctly declared that vegetable seeds were destroyed by boiling water, those with the hardest integuments not excepted. But Pouchet made the experiment for himself, and in twenty different repetitions of it found that some of the seeds germinated after four hours' boiling. 'Les semences,' he says, de ce medicago du Brésil résistaient à une ébullition de quatre heures de durée. Où cela s'arrête-t-il ? Je n'en sais rien, n'ayant pas expérimenté au delà.' 6 This observation, which excited great attention at the time, which afterwards formed the subject of discussions in the Academy, and which certainly is the most important observation of the kind ever made, is briefly spoken of in a foot-note on the page above referred to. I had read the note and forgotten it, my lapse of memory being confirmed by the fact that in my respondent's later volume, Evolution, or the Origin of Life, where he treats very fully of the destructive influence of heat upon living matter,' the observation of Pouchet is not, to my knowledge, once mentioned. My respondent refers to Mr. Moseley in the Academy, and to Professor Huxley at Liverpool, as enunciating views which were afterwards 'abundantly refuted' both in this country and on the Continent. Notwithstanding such refutation, Professor Tyndall,' continues my respondent, three years later-that is early in 1876-attempted to deny that such experimental results as mine could be legitimately obtained, and sought to convince the Royal Society and a crowded audience at the Royal Institution that I had fallen into error, and that no such results could be obtained by a skilled experimentalist like himself. In evidence of this he brought forward a 'cloud of witnesses,' all of which, if rightly interpreted, gave very different testimony from that which Professor Tyndall imagined. But whilst he at first strenuously denied my facts, he is now only able to demur to my interpretation. What the different testimony' here spoken of is I do not know, but I do know that the cloud of witnesses' confront this writer now, as they did in 1876. Save by such intimations as the above, which seem to point to a reserve of wisdom in the writer's private mind, he has never, to my knowledge, attempted to shake their evidence. The birth of the witnesses' was on this wise. At a meeting of the Pathological Society, specially convened for the discussion of the 'germ theory' of contagious disease, my respondent thus addressed his medical colleagues :- With the view of settling these questions, therefore, we may carefully prepare an infusion from some animal tissue, be it muscle, kidney, or liver; we may place it in a flask, whose neck is drawn out and narrowed in the blowpipe flame; we may boil the fluid, seal the vessel during ebullition, and await the result, as I have often done. After a variable time, the previously heated fluid within the hermetically sealed flask swarms more or less plentifully with bacteria and allied organisms. The speaker had already informed his audience that he was discussing a question lying at the root of the most fatal class of diseases to which the human race is liable.' Special care, I thought, was needed in the performance of experiments which lay at the basis of a subject of this importance. I was not sure that the speaker had observed this care. I therefore took him at his word, prepared infusions of animal tissues, comprising mutton, beef, fowl, wild duck, partridge, plover, pheasant, snipe, rabbit, hare, haddock, mullet, codfish, sole, and other substances. I placed them in flasks, 'with necks narrowed and drawn out in the blowpipe flame.' I boiled the fluids, sealed the vessels during ebullition, and awaited the result. These are the witnesses' of whose evidence my respondent possesses an interpretation' known, as far as I am aware, only to himself. The fact, as known to me and others, is that the witnesses contradicted his assertion. He had affirmed that they would swarm with bacteria and allied organisms. They distinctly refused to do so. This thing was not done in a corner. One hundred and thirty such flasks were submitted to the scrutiny of the Royal Society in January 1876, while thirty of them were critically examined by the biological secretary of the Society, Professor Huxley. In one flask, and in one only, a small mycelium was discovered, and it, as Professor Huxley remarked at the time, afforded a dramatic confirmation' of the overwhelming evidence otherwise adduced. In this flask, and in it only, a small orifice was discovered, through which the infusion could be projected, and by which the germinal matter of the air had had access to the flask. 6 My respondent next deals with Liebig's doctrine of fermentation, regarding which, after some preliminary remarks, he says: If then, as Liebig contended, organic matter in a state of decay is capable of acting as a ferment, and of initiating the common fermentations and putrefactions, there surely can be no error in quoting him in support of such views.' Certainly not. Whether organic matter in a state of decay possess the power ascribed to it or not, the writer was perfectly |