Page 99 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
96
Perhaps one day geology, chemistry and physiology will
join in affirming that the great analogies that there are
stated to be between geological fauna and flora and living
fauna and flora, from the point of view of form, exist also
from the point of view of histology and physiology. I
have already set forth some differences between geological
microzymas of various origin: thus, while bacteria may
appear with the limestone of Armissan and that of
Barbentane, these are never developed in the case of chalk
or of Oolithic limestone under the same circumstances.
Analogous differences may be met with among the
microzymas of living beings. ... It is remarkable that
the microzymas of limestones that I have examined are
almost without action at low temperatures, and that their
activity only develops between 35 and 40 degrees. A
glacial temperature, comparable to that of the valley of
Obi, would completely arrest this activity."
Though many ridiculed such new and startlingly
original ideas and though many nowadays may continue
to do so, we have to remember that the mysteries of chalk
may well bear much more investigation. Modern
geologists seem ready to admit that chalk possesses some
remarkable qualities, that under certain conditions it
produces movements that might evidence life and induce
something like fermentation. Professor Bastian, though
his inferences differ completely from Bechamp's, again
5
confirms the latter s researches. We read in The Origin of
—
1
Life as follows: "We may, therefore, well recognise that
the lower the forms of life—the nearer they are to their
source—the greater is likely to have been the similarity
among those that have been produced in different ages,
just as the lowest forms are now practically similar in all
regions of the earth. How, otherwise, consistently with
the doctrine of evolution, are we to account for the fact
that different kinds of bacilli and micrococci have been
found in animal and vegetable remains in the Triassic and

1 The Origin of Life, by H. Charlton Bastian, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S.
pp. 67, 68.