xr.] SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 351 



a discoverer of having to defend himself against the 

 charge of impugning the authority of the Scriptures; 1 

 for his adversaries declared that the generation of bees 

 from the carcase of a dead lion is affirmed, in the Book 

 of Judges, to have been the origin of the famous riddle 

 with which Samson perplexed the Philistines : — 



" Out of the cater came forth meat, 

 And out of the strong came forth sweetness." 



Against all odds, however, Eedi, strong with the 

 strength of demonstrable fact, did splendid battle for 

 Biogenesis ; but it is remarkable that he held the doc- 

 trine in a sense which, if he had lived in these times, 

 would have infallibly caused him to be classed among 

 the defenders of " spontaneous generation." " Omne 

 vivuni ex vivo," "no life without antecedent life," 

 aphoristically sums up Redi's doctrine ; but he went 

 no further. It is most remarkable evidence of the 

 philosophic caution and impartiality of his mind, that 

 although he had speculatively anticipated the manner 

 in which grubs really are deposited in fruits and in the 

 galls of plants, he deliberately admits that the evidence 

 is insufficient to bear him out ; and he therefore pre- 

 fers the supposition that they are generated by a modi- 

 fication of the living substance of the plants themselves. 

 Indeed, he regards these vegetable growths as organs, 

 by means of which the plant gives rise to an animal, 

 and looks upon this production of specific animals as 

 the final cause of the galls and of at any rate some 

 fruits. And he proposes to explain the occurrence of 

 parasites within the animal body in the same way. 2 



1 "Molti, e molti altri ancora vi potrei annoverare, se non fossi chia- 

 mato a rispondere alle rampogne di alcuni, che hruscamente mi raminen- 

 tano cid, che si legge nel capitolo quattordicesimo del sacrosanto Libro de 1 



giudici " — Redt, I. c, p. 45. 



a The passage (Esperienze, p. 129) is worth quoting in full: — 



"Se dovessi palesarvi il mio sentimento credcrei che i frutti, i legumi, 



