Abstract
THE investigation embodied in the memoir now submitted to the Society was opened in the summer of 1876 by a series of tentative experiments on turnip-infusions, to which were added varying quantities of bruised or pounded cheese. I was soon, however, drawn away from them to other experiments on infusions of hay. With this substance no difficulty was encountered in my first inquiry. Boiled for five minutes, and exposed to air purified spontaneously or freed from its floating matter by calcination or filtration, hay infusion, though employed in multiplied experiments at various times, never showed the least competence to kindle into life. After months of transparency, I haves in a great number of cases, inoculated this infusion with the smallest specks of animal and vegetable liquids containing Bacteria, and observed twenty-four hours afterwards, its colour lightened, and its mass rendered opaque by the multiplication of these organisms.
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Spontaneous Generation 1 . Nature 16, 127–129 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016127a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016127a0