On Spontaneous Generation. 369 



vegetables, and probably contained only a few beds of flow- 

 ers for ornament. 



The description which the younger Pliny gives of his own 

 garden, with its straight walks and fantastically cut box trees, 

 is certainly repugnant to modern principles of taste ; but a few 

 reigns back it would have applied to many of the gardens even 

 in this country. Sir Robert Walpole, in his Essay, contrasts 

 this garden with the glorious architecture of the same time, 

 and remarks that nothing but a parterre is wanting, to make 

 the description of a garden in the reign of Trajan, serve for 

 one in the reign of King William. Pope's well-known ac- 

 count of the villa and Garden of the Duke of Chandos, (' Mo- 

 ral Essays,' Ep. iv.), would stand for that of an ancient Roman, 

 and he says less than even Pliny does, of the cultivation of 

 flowers, or any lesser ornaments. No one would deny the 

 existence of a taste for flower-gardening during the Dutch 

 epoch, when the same style as that of King's time prevailed. 

 Yet if, by some strange revolutions, we could conceive the 

 greater part of our literature to be lost, as has happened to 

 that of Rome, and only a few standard authors to survive, such 

 as Pope and Dryden, future gardeners and botanists could ar- 

 gue with great plausibility, against our ancestors having flow- 

 er-gardens at all. There is certainly no record of any great 

 floral epidemic, synchronous with the box-tree era of Roman 

 gardening, such as the tulipomania of modern times, but we 

 must not hence conclude that the cultivation of flowers as a 

 source of amusement was then disregarded. And as Flora 

 and Priapus are not invoked by any of the poets who have 

 come down to our times, we feel all the more regret in read- 

 ing these lines, where Virgil longs to sing of the gardens of 

 his native country. 



" Atque equidem, extremo ni jam sub fine laborum 

 " Vela traham, et terris festinem advertere proram ; 

 " Forsitan, et pingues hortos, quae cura colendi 

 " Ornaret, canerem." 



Art. IV. On Spontaneous Generation. By W. Weissenborn, 



Ph.D. 



The ancient doctrine of generatio spontanea seu cequivoca, as 

 opposed to that expressed in the tenet, "Omne vivum ex ovo," 

 has, within the last few centuries, as often had the suffrages 

 of eminent natural philosophers, as it has been the object of 

 the most determined opposition from others. After Harvey, 



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