34 GENERATION OF INSECTS 
a drop or so of liquid grease floating on the surface; 
but the snake kept its form intact, with the same color, as 
if it had been put in but yesterday; the eels, on the con- 
trary, produced little liquid, though they had become 
very much swollen, and losing all shape, looked like a 
viscous mass of glue; the veal, after many weeks, became 
hard and dry. 
Not content with these experiments, I tried many 
others at different seasons, using different vessels. In 
order to leave nothing undone, I even had pieces of meat 
put under ground, but though remaining buried for weeks, 
they never bred worms, as was always the case when 
flies had been allowed to light on the meat. One day a 
large number of worms, which had bred in some buffalo- 
meat, were killed by my order; having placed part in a 
closed dish, and part in an open one, nothing appeared in 
the first dish, but in the second worms had hatched, which 
changing as usual into egg-shape balls [pupae], finally 
became flies of the common kind. In the same experi- 
ment tried with dead flies, I never saw anything breed in 
the closed vessel. 
Hence I might conjecture that Father Kircher, though 
a man worthy of esteem, was led into erroneous state- 
ments in the twelfth book of " The Subterranean World," 
Where he describes the experiment of breeding flies in 
the dead bodies of the same. " The dead flies," says the 
good man, " should be besprinkled and soaked with 
honey-water, and then placed on a copper-plate exposed 
to the tepid heat of ashes; afterward very minute worms, 
only visible through the microscope, will appear, which 
little by little grow wings on the back and assume the 
shape of very small flies, that slowly attain perfect size." 
I believe, however, that the aforesaid honey-water only 
