We should be glad to learn that the employment of a drop of ammonia would enable us to pronounce an opinion with this degree of confidence on the nature of the lowest microscopic beings; but is M. Robin absolutely correct in his assumptions?  That gentleman himself remarks that spermatozoa, which belong to animal organisms, are insoluble in ammonia, the effect of which is merely to make them paler.  If a difference of action in certain reagents, in ammonia, for example, were sufficient to determine the limits of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, might we not argue that there must be a very great and natural difference between moulds and bacteria, inasmuch as the presence of a small quantity of acid in the nutritive medium facilitates the growth and propagation of the former, whilst it is able to prevent the life of bacteria and vibrios?  Although as is well known, movement is not an exclusive characteristic of animals, yet we have always been inclined to regard vibrios as animals, on account of the peculiar character of their movements.  How greatly they differ in this respect from the diatomacae, for example!  When the vibrio encounters an obstacle it turns, or after assuring itself by some visual effort or other that it cannot overcome it, it retraces its steps.  The colpoda—­undoubted infusoria—­behave in an exactly similar manner.  It is true one may argue that the zoospores of certain cryptogamia exhibit similar movements; but do not these zoospores possess as much of an animal nature as do the spermatozoa?  As far as bacteria are concerned, when, as already remarked, we see them crowd round a bubble of air in a liquid to prolong their life, oxygen having failed them everywhere else, how can we avoid believing that they are animated by an instinct for life, of the same kind that we find in animals?  M. Robin seems to us to be wrong in supposing that it is possible to draw any absolute line of separation between the animal and vegetable kingdoms.  The settlement of this line however, we repeat again, no matter what it may be, has no serious bearing upon the questions that have been the subject of our researches.

In like manner the difficulty which M. Robin has raised in objecting to the employment of the word germ, when we cannot specify whether the nature of that germ is animal or vegetable, is in many respects an unnecessary one.  In all the questions which we have discussed, whether we were speaking of fermentation or spontaneous generation, the word germ has been used in the sense of origin of living organism.  If Liebig, for example, said of an albuminous substance that it gave birth to ferment, could we contradict him more plainly than by replying “No; ferment is an organized being, the germ of which is always present, and the albuminous substance merely serves by its occurrence to nourish the germ and its successive generations”?