12 THEORIES OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 



creatures which creep upon the earth, and various Avorms and 

 even beetles, cockchafers and cockroaches ; and also from 

 heavenly dew there are conceived midges and gnats and other 

 such things. These all perished in the Flood and after the flood 

 they arose anew from such beginnings. ^^ 



In the course of theology which he gave in the Ecclesiastical 

 Academy in Kiev Theofan Prokopovich developed, almost 

 word for word, the same idea. 



Furthermore, there is a multitude of animals which arise 

 without copulation of the parents ; independently, from rotten 

 things, and there was thus no necessity to give shelter in the ark 

 to creatures such as mice, worms, wasps, bees, flies and scor- 

 pions.^^ 



Even in the nineteenth century a translation of a book by 

 W. Frantze* was published by Benjamin, archbishop of 

 Nizhegorod, in which it was stated that insects, worms, frogs 

 and mice arise by spontaneous generation " from rotting tree 

 stumps, from the dung of animals, from the sand of the sea, 

 from decaying earth, from corpses . . . etc."^^ 



As we have already pointed out, science was at a very low 

 ebb in mediaeval Europe. It was in complete subjection to 

 theology. The natural phenomena observed by the travellers 

 and learned men of those times were not only discussed, but 

 also described, as though scholastic wisdom demanded that 

 they should be in complete conformity with the Church 

 dogmas. The works of the learned men of the Middle Ages 

 therefore abound in those same fantastic descriptions and 

 sometimes even sketches of the spontaneous generation of 

 various insects, worms and fishes from slime and damp earth, 

 of frogs from the dews of May, and even of lions from the 

 stones of the desert. It is specially characteristic of the medi- 

 aeval methods of the study of nature that at this time there 

 was a wide diffusion of lore concerning goose trees, vegetable 

 lambs and homunculi. 



According to the testimony of very authoritative men of 

 learning of those times, geese and ducks arise from barnacles 

 which in their turn are derived from the fruits of trees. From 

 these latter, birds may also be formed directly. 



*Historia animalium sacra etc. Editio sexta. Wittebergae, 1659. — Translator. 



