Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s notes:

In this transcription, paired underscores denote _italicised text_, paired asterisks denote *bold text* and a ^ (caret) indicates that the following bracketed character was superscripted in the original text.

Footnotes have been positioned below the relevant paragraphs.

A small number of errors have been corrected silently, including the following:

Amæbæ —> Amœbæ
continuea —> continued
translalations —> translations
Harvar —> Harvard
ST. —> St.
missing word ‘in’ inserted
redundant comma deleted

The following misplaced section of text has been correctly positioned:

disowned. But these are not its best features: its sustained power of reasoning, its wide sweep of observation and reflection, its elevated ethical and social tone, stamp it as a work of high excellence, and as such we cordially recommend it to our readers.”--Saturday Review.

Inconsistently labelled passages of text are as in the original, e.g. a b c d; a b c e; _ b c e;

A title has been added to the original featureless book cover.

_In the Press, in Two Volumes, Crown 8vo., with numerous
Illustrations_,

THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE.

BY

THE SAME AUTHOR.

London and New York:

MACMILLAN AND CO.

Fig. 1.--The simplest forms of Life--_Bacteria_, _Torulæ_, _&c._

Fig. 2.--_Bacteria_, _Vibriones_, and _Leptothrix_ filaments.

(× 800 diameters.)]

THE MODES OF ORIGIN

OF

LOWEST ORGANISMS:

INCLUDING

A DISCUSSION OF THE EXPERIMENTS
OF M. PASTEUR,

AND A REPLY TO SOME STATEMENTS BY PROFESSORS
HUXLEY AND TYNDALL.

By H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.,

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS;
PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON;
ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN TO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE HOSPITAL,
AND TO THE NATIONAL HOSPITAL FOR THE EPILEPTIC AND PARALYSED.

London and New York:

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1871.

[_All rights reserved._]

“Quant à ce qui concerne la prétendue incubation d’œufs
d’Infusoires dans l’infusion, il faudrait d’abord prouver
l’existence de ces œufs. Les dit-on trop petits pour être aperçus,
c’est avouer qu’on ne peut rien savoir de leur existence. * * *
Croire que partout où l’on rencontre des Infusoires, ils ont été
précédés d’œufs, c’est donc admettre une pure hypothèse, qui n’a
d’autre fondement que l’analogie. * * * Si c’est seulement par
l’analogie qu’on suppose des œufs chez eux, il faut accorder à ces
œufs des propriétés semblables à celles de tous les œufs connus;
car ce serait jouer sur les mots que de supposer qu’ils en ont de
particulières à eux seuls.”--BURDACH’S _Traité de Physiologie_,
Translation by Jourdan, 1837, t. i., p. 22.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.