SPALLANZANI 245 



to recite verses from Homer, Tasso, and Virgil. But " canto di 

 cigno," as Prof. Pavesi says — a droll metaphor having regard 

 to Spallanzani's raptorial countenance, particularly as it must 

 have looked peering above the bedclothes ! — " Canto di cigno," 

 for at 2.30 a.m. on February 11, 1799, after having received 

 the Papal benediction, he fell back and expired suddenly. 



At the post-mortem his heart was taken out and deposited 

 by his brother Nicolo in the church at Scandiano. The bladder 

 and urethra, being of pathological interest, are still preserved 

 in Pavia — mortal relics as notorious as Mr. Babbage's brain 

 or Lord Darnley's left femur in the museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. 



Spallanzani's reputation beyond any doubt has declined 

 from the meridian height it occupied during his lifetime. His 

 genius of character and his attainments were evidently a potent 

 influence among his contemporaries, and the nature of some 

 of his experiments in those dark days was well calculated 

 to excite the wonder and admiration of the crowd. It used 

 to be said that fecundation was among the mysteries of nature, 

 and, like many of her operations, an object of admiration 

 rather than of inquiry. But the reverend professor, unwilling 

 to cast too much responsibility on the Divine Power, however 

 agreeable that might be to the idleness of man, set to work 

 and succeeded in artificially fertilising a bitch spaniel with the 

 spontaneous emissions of a dog injected by a syringe. Sixty- 

 two days afterwards three lively whelps were born. " I can 

 truly say," he remarks, " that I never received greater pleasure 

 upon any occasion since I cultivated natural philosophy." 



His work in pond life and protozoa — " myriads of which 

 peopled a single drop," — and his observations on Rotifers 

 " which came to life again " after desiccation, lent colour to 

 the hyperbolic expression of admiration with which a poet 

 suggested that he had divine power. 



I trust it is no very cynical asperity to say that there was 

 nothing divine at all about the Abbe. Spallanzani was not 

 an angel ; yet he was something more than a great biologist — 

 he was a great man. A study of the extensive biographical 

 literature which has grown up around him will give the curious 

 reader some idea of his masterful personality and of the way 

 in which it gripped the scientific world in which he lived. 



