14 THEORIES OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 



to reveal within themselves lambs covered with white wool 

 and having very delicious meat. ' Sir John Mandeville ' 

 described his travels in Eastern lands and also told stories of 

 a whole tree, from the melon-shaped fruits of which there 

 arose living sheep. -^ This story persisted for centuries and 

 as late as the middle of the seventeenth century it was 

 repeated anew by Adam Olearius in his descriptions of his 

 travels in Muscovy and Persia. He wrote : 



We were told that there beyond Samara, between the rivers 

 Volga and Don, there grows a rare form of melon or rather 

 pumpkin which is very like an ordinary melon in size and shape 

 but its appearance reminds one of a lamb because it has clearly 

 defined limbs. The Russians therefore call it the 'little ram'. This 

 ' vegetable lamb ' feeds on the grass around it but frequently 

 falls a prey to wolves, which are very fond of it. 



Later, Olearius writes that he had the good fortune actually 

 to see the wool of such a sheep. ""^ 



The story of the homunculus developed on the basis of 

 alchemical experiments. It is known to have made its appear- 

 ance as early as the first century a.d. This story was based on 

 the supposition that by mixing the passive maternal original 

 substance with the active masculine one it is possible to re- 

 produce artificially the phenomenon of birth and to obtain 

 the embryo of a tiny person — homunculus. 



Like the legend of the goose tree and the vegetable lamb, 

 stories about the homunculus were current throughotit the 

 Middle Ages and are to be met with in many alchemical 

 treatises. A typical exponent of the earlier natural philosophy 

 of the sixteenth century, Theophrastus Bombast von Hohen- 

 heim, known as Paracelsus (1498-1541), even gives an 'exact 

 receipt ' for the preparation of homunculi. For this it is 

 necessary to obtain human sperm, place it in a sealed gourd 

 inside a horse's stomach and during the course of a certain 

 time to carry out a series of complicated manipulations. In 

 this way there is formed a small person complete in all its 

 parts, like children born of women but on a far smaller scale. 



In general, Paracelsus was a convinced supporter of the 

 spontaneous generation of living things. He maintained that 

 there is an active life force, the arche, which governs the 



