78 GENERATION OF INSECTS 
months, return suddenly to dust and mud, whence they 
again, on the approach of Spring, resuscitate to a new 
life. 
This thought of Pliny's has been approved by many 
grave philosophers of our century, and particularly by 
Father Fabri, who in his justly celebrated book on the 
generation of animals, at propositions seventy-five and 
seventy-six, admits that frogs are regenerated from the 
decayed bodies of other frogs. At present I am not in- 
clined to believe this, not having seen anything of the 
kind; but I am always ready to change my mind, espe- 
cially if Pliny's frogs had happened to have been torn 
and bitten by some hydra or other beast of serpentine 
nature such as our divine poet put in hell, and whose 
bite utterly consumed one of the damned, the ashes of 
whom, however, had power to gather together and re- 
form the victim. But these are all fables. Those ani- 
mals that apparently were made of earth, had they been 
closely examined, it would have been evident that they 
were merely covered with mud; and though living things 
do arise in swamps and mudholes, it is because eggs have 
first been laid in those places, just as Aristotle and Pliny 
tell of locusts and mantis. 
Land-turtles also lay eggs and put them under ground; 
and those that live in fresh or salt water lay eggs on 
the shore and cover them with sand, where they are 
acted upon by the sun's heat, and hatch; whence an in- 
experienced person might conclude that the little turtles 
were born directly from the earth, from which they are 
seen issuing. Something of this sort explains Father 
Athanasius Kircher's curious experiment. This learned 
man of letters, who is very ingenious in his speculations, 
says as follows : " At the beginning of March, the frogs 
