GENERATION OF INSECTS. 11 



These pandorinia he elsewhere describes as probably 

 nothing more than ' animated scions of Zoocarpoe* 

 (propagules animes des Zoocarpes.)* It would be 

 unprohtable to go into any lengthened discussion upon 

 this mysterious subject ; and we have great doubts 

 whether the ocular demonstration by the microscope 

 would succeed except in the hands of a disciple of the 

 school. Even with naturalists, whose business it is to 

 deal with facts, the reason is often wonderfully influ- 

 enced by the imagination. 



But the question immediately before us happily does 

 not involve these recondite discussions ; for if even 

 pandorinia and other animalcules were proved beyond 

 a doubt to originate in the play of chemical affinities 

 or galvanic actions — (a more refined process, it must 

 be confessed, than Kircher's chopped snakes), it would 

 not affect our doctrine that all insects are hatched from 

 eggs : for no naturalist of the present day classes 

 such animalcules among insects. Leaving animal- 

 cules and zoophytes, therefore, out of the question, 

 we have only to examine such branches of the theory 

 of spontaneous generation as seem to involve the pro- 

 pagation of genuine insects, — like the fancies about 

 putrefaction which we have seen refuted. 



The notion that small insects, such as aphides 

 and the leaf-rolling caterpillars, are spread about, or 

 rather generated, by what is termed blight (possibly 

 from the Belgic hlinkcm^ to strike with lightning), is 

 almost universally believed even by the most intel- 

 ligent, if they have not particularly studied the hab- 

 its of insects. Mr Main, of Chelsea, an ingenious 

 and well-informed gardener and naturalist, describes 

 this as an ' easterly wind, attended by a blue mist. 

 The latter is called a blight, and many people 

 imagine that the aphides are wafted through the 



* Diet. Class., Art. Pandorin es. 



