THE 



EDINBURGH JOURNAL 



OF 



NATURAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 



SEPTEMBER 1830. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



ART. I. An Examination of the Opinions of Bremser and 

 Others on the Equivocal Production of Animals. By William 

 Rhind, Esq. Surgeon, Member of the Royal Medical and Royal 

 Physical Societies of Edinburgh. 



In the early stages of science, when as yet but few facts and ob- 

 servations were accumulated, and the minds of men were more dis- 

 posed to launch into vague speculations, than to search after truth 

 by patient induction, the doctrine of spontaneous generation, both 

 in the animal and vegetable kingdom, was readily adopted, and 

 long entertained as a plausible theory. 



Aristotle observing a dead carcass in a few days become a living 

 mass of worms, immediately accounted for their formation by sup- 

 posing them to be the result of a putrefactive process in the animal 

 matter. We have also the histories of the raining of frogs, and 

 the more poetical account of the impregnation of mares by the 

 wind. Such opinions passed unchallenged from one philosopher 

 to another for many ages, till the acute and laborious Redi* direct- 

 ing his attention to the subject, traced the maggots in the dead car- 

 cass to eggs, and these eggs to the parent fly which had deposited 

 them, and thus by observation and analogy throughout other mi- 

 nute species of animal life, established the proposition that all ani- 

 mals derive their origin from other similar animals. In this opi- 

 nion, Redi has been followed by many of the most distinguished 

 naturalists down to the present time. Yet there are not a few, 



• Experimenta circa generationem Insectorum. Amstel. I7O8. 

 VOL. II. 3 E 



