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PHILADELPHIA, PA., JUNE, 1899. 

 EDITORIAL. 



11 Prior to 1618 it was supposed that all small animals were 

 spontaneously generated ; for instance, eels were supposed to 

 be generated from the slime of the Nile, and maggots were 

 thought to be spontaneously generated in meat. To the ex- 

 amination of this very point the celebrated Francesco Kedi, 

 physician to the Grand Dukes Ferdinand the Second and 

 Coomos the Third, of Tuscany, and a member of the Academy 

 del Cimeuto, addressed himself in 1618. He had seen the 

 maggots of putrefying flesh and reflected on their possible ori- 

 gin. But he was not content with mere reflection nor with 

 the theoretic guesswork which his predecessors had founded 

 on imperfect observations. Watching meat during its passage- 

 from freshness to decay, prior to the appearance of maggots, 

 he invariably observed flies buzzing around the meat and fre- 

 quently alighting upon it. The maggots, he thought, might 

 be the half -developed progeny of these flies. The inductive 

 giiess precedes experiment, by which, however, it must be 

 finally tested. 



