MADE AT LANCASTER. 119 



stant jaring of the building by the shutting of the doors be- 

 longing to it. 



I am, Sir, with great esteem, 



your friend and humble servant, 



ANDREW ELLICOTT. 



Mr. Robert Patterson, ) 

 V. P. of the A. P. S. j 



No. XXIV. 



Observations and Experiments relating to equivocal, or spontaneous, 

 Generation. By J. Priestley, L. L. D. F. E. S. 



Read, Nov. 18ih, 1803. 



THERE is nothing in modern philosophy that appears to 

 me so extraordinary, as the revival of what has long been con- 

 sidered as the exploded doctrine of equivocal, or, as Dr. Darwin 

 calls it, spontaneous generation* ; by which is meant the produc- 

 tion of organized bodies from substances that have no organi- 

 zation, as plants and animals from no pre-existing germs of the 

 same kinds, plants without seeds, and animals without sexual 

 intercourse. 



The germ of an organized body, the seed of a plant, or 

 the embrio of an animal, in its first discoverable state, is now 



* Thus the tall oak, the giant of the wood, 

 Wh'.cli bears Britannia's thunders on the flood ; 

 The whale, unmeasured monster of the main, 

 The lordly lion, monarch of the plain, 

 The eagle soaring in the realms of air, 

 Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare, 

 Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd. 

 Of language, reason, and reflection proud, • 

 AVith brow erect who scorns this earthly sod, 

 And styles himself the image of his God ; 

 Arose from rudiments of form and ser.se, 

 An embrion point, or microscopic ens ! ! ! 



Temple of Nature. 



