238 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



by Spallanzani, who placed over against Buff on 's interesting 

 speculations his own still more interesting facts obtained under 

 conditions of rigid experiment — notably his work with her- 

 metically sealed flasks in which he showed no life developed if 

 they were subjected to powerful heat. Spallanzani 's methods 

 were an enormous advance upon those previously used, although 

 they by no means set the matter at rest. The old bone of 

 Spontaneous Generation has since been dug up many times 

 and chewed. And it is not buried yet. 1 



Of course, Spallanzani made mistakes — indeed to his 

 credit it might be said, if the ancient adage be true. In those 

 days it used to be thought by some that fecundation was 

 effected by some sort of aura or gas given off by the semen of 

 the male, and though Spallanzani succeeded in showing that 

 the semen itself is the responsible agent, he considered he had 

 " irrefragably proved " the falsity of the doctrine of Leeuwen- 

 hoek and his followers, who, in a measure rightly, were 

 advocating the " spermatic vermicelli " as the " immediate 

 authors of generation." 2 It is permissible to feel a certain 

 amount of sardonic satisfaction at the ex cathedra pronounce- 

 ments the professor gave upon questions in which Time, the 

 Enemy, has found him out. Spallanzani 's loyalty to his own 

 observations made him over-confident, too cocksure. 



An incident in connection with his translation of Bonnet's 

 The Contemplation of Nature is worth recording for the illumina- 

 tion it sheds upon his point of view in biology and in university 

 education. Each professor was required to select a book for 

 the use of the students, and Spallanzani 's choice fell naturally 

 on his translation of Bonnet. But this selection, on being 

 submitted, did not meet with approval in Vienna, where ideas 

 of university instruction in biology were diametrically opposed 

 to those now in vogue. That is to say, great importance was 

 attached to systematic work to the exclusion of a more philo- 

 sophical treatment of the subject. The Professor of Natural 

 History in Vienna — a man unknown to fame and the author 

 of a single modest treatise entitled Additamenta qucedam ad 



1 I am referring to the experiments of the late Dr. H. Charlton Bastian. 



2 Loc. cit. p. 159. Spallanzani aggressively claimed to have fertilised frog's 

 eggs with seminal fluid devoid of spermatozoa. Leeuwenhoek, on the other hand, 

 denied the ovum any important part in the formation of the embryo, apparently 

 regarding it simply as the nidus in which the spermatozoon developed. 



