370 On Spontaneous Generation. 



Vallisneri, Redi, and even the great Linnaeus, had voted a- 

 gainst it, as regards plants, it was, for some time, considered 

 as entirely exploded ; but the discussion was actively renew- 

 ed, towards the middle of the 18th century, by the zoologists, 

 when Needham, Wrisberg, O. F. Mtiller, &c. supported the 

 doctrine against Spallanzani, Bonnet, Trechowsky, and other 

 opponents. Among botanists, the question was not agitated 

 at that time, and Willdenow treated the generatio cuquivoca 

 as an opinion which could only have been entertained during 

 the infancy of science. About the beginning of the present 

 century, however, Treviranus, Oken, and their followers, 

 allowed that spontaneous generation was possible as to or- 

 ganisms more or less perfect; but in 1823, Professor Schouw, 

 of Copenhagen, in his ' Journal Tidsskrift fur Naturwidens- 

 kaberne,' tried to invalidate the observations of Mr. Hofman 

 of Hofmansgave, that were favourable to that doctrine ; and 

 the Society of Natural History at Gorlitz, in Silesia, has just 

 published in its 'Transactions' along article, by which the 

 "omne vivum ex ovo" is again to be exalted to the throne, as 

 the only legitimate ruler. Thus, it would appear, the subject 

 requires to be once more treated u ab ovo.'''' 



In attempting to do so in an unprejudiced manner, we ought 

 to discard from our minds such preconceived notions as must 

 needs prevent us from arriving at the truth, as far as we able 

 to perceive it in this mysterious matter. Though this remark 

 be self-evident, it is not uncalled for, in times when a man 

 may incur the imputation of atheism, for presuming to observe 

 the spontaneous generation of the Acarus horridus, several 

 thousand years after the Mosaic creation ; or when books con- 

 taining passages like the following, are eagerly read and im- 

 plicitly believed by many. " In this ark of safety, such of 

 the animal world as were intended to replace the genera that 

 would perish, also found a shelter; and when these provisions 

 for re-peopling the earth with its animated races, in the new 

 state and course of things that were ordained to succeed this 

 calamity, were completed, the tremendous revolution occur- 

 red"* Similar attempts, however, at distorting what may be 



* See the last page of Mr. Sharon Turner's ' Sacred History of the Globe,' 

 fourth edition, 1833. This page, the only one which I have read in that 

 work, put me in mind of a manuscript, which I saw a few years ago, in the 

 possession of an English lady, and upon which she set great value. It was 

 '■A Treatise on the Species of Jonas' Whale,' which had been written during 

 a course of lectures delivered before an auditory of ladies. The conclusion 

 at which the learned Professor had arrived, was, that it was the Physetcr 

 macrocephalus. Bochart, ('Hicrozoieon,' P. I. lib. i. c. 7), made out, two 

 hundred years ago, that it was an immense specimen of the Careharias ca~ 



