Oxygen is also necessary to life. It is the pabulum vitæ. But the discovery of the beings called by Pasteur anaerobia appears to contradict this statement. Pfeffer, the illustrious botanist, was certain, in 1897, that the dogma of the necessity of oxygen no longer held good. This is no longer tenable. In 1898 Beijerinck carried out most careful researches on anaerobia said to have been cultivated in a vacuum, such as the bacteria of tetanus and the septic vibrion; or on those to which oxygen seems to be a poison, such as the butyric and the butylic ferments, the anaerobia of putrefaction, the reducing spirilla of the sulphates. All use free oxygen. They consume very little it is true; they are micro-aerobia. The other organisms, on the contrary, need more. They are macro-aerobia or simply aerobia. Besides, if the so-called anaerobia take little or no free oxygen, it matters little. They take the oxygen in combination. It may be said with L. Errera that they have an affinity for oxygen, for they extract it from its combinations, and that "they are so well adapted to this mode of existence that life in the open air being too easy no longer suits them." There are for the different animal species different optima of oxygen.
Living beings require a certain amount of heat. Life, which could not have existed on the globe when it was incandescent, will not be able to exist when it is frozen. For each organism and each function there is a maximum and a minimum of temperature compatible with activity. There is also an optimum. For instance, the optimum is 29° C for the germination of corn.
The condition of the optimum exists in the same
