Biogenesis as exhibited in decomposition, putrefaction, or decay.

  • Bell, Robert, 1845-1926.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biogenesis as exhibited in decomposition, putrefaction, or decay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    19/42 (page 12)
    is pretty sure to carry off a spore or two. It is ‘ infectious' because the spores become scattered about all sort of matter in the neighbourhood of the slain flies.”* I might refer to the fungus which has been so destructive of late to the silk-worm, and which, in a single year, entailed a loss to a district of France of no less a sum than 190,000,000 francs, and which tempted the French Government to offer the handsome reward of 500,000 francs for the use of a remedy which should prove infallible. But I will refer you to Nature for July 1870, for a detailed and a most interesting account of M. Pasteur’s researches on the subject. Many instances of disease being produced in the vegetable kingdom by the action of microscopic bodies could be ad- duced, but the mention of one will be quite sufficient for my purpose. I refer to that blight so common in our country and so familiar to us all—the potatoe disease. Any one visiting a field of diseased potatoes must have been conscious of a most loathsome smell which emanates from the diseased plants, this stench must be due to the decomposing effect of the minute fungus which covers the affected leaves, and which seems to penetrate the very heart of the tuber destroying aU' the starch cells of the root and leaving the potatoe a mass of disease. This fungus is easily detected by the microscope and bears a very dose resemblance to mould. There can be no doubt that this is the real cause of the disease which so frequently has, more especially in Ireland, produced such misery and suffering. I do not remember a single instance, nor have I been able to find one recorded, of this disease attacking the growing plant, that is, when all its 'vdtal energies are at the maximum. On the contrary, we know that the epidemic prevails when the plant has passed maturity, and therefore has its vitality lessened; and, moreover, the blight generally comes in the wake of a blasting wind, which has further prostrated the vitality of the plant; so invariably is this the case, that the wind gets the credit of having produced * Professor Huxley’s address at Liverpool.