SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 307 



would now be rejected as monstrous by the most fanatical 

 supporter of the doctrine. Shell-fish of all kinds were 

 considered to be without parental origin. Eels were sup- 

 posed to spring spontaneously from the fat ooze of the 

 Nile. Caterpillars were the spontaneous products of the 

 leaves on which they fed; while winged insects, serpents, 

 rats, and mice were all thought capable of being generated 

 without sexual intervention. 



The most copious source of this life without an ancestry 

 was putrefying flesh; and, lacking the checks imposed by 

 fuller investigation, the conclusion that flesh possesses and 

 exerts this generative power is a natural one. I well re- 

 member when a child of ten or twelve seeing a joint of 

 imperfectly salted beef cut into, and coils of maggots laid 

 bare within the mass. Without a moment's hesitation I 

 jumped to the conclusion that these maggots had been 

 spontaneously generated in the meat. I had no knowledge 

 which could qualify or oppose this conclusion, and for the 

 time it was irresistible. The childhood of the individual 

 typifies that of the race, and the belief here enunciated 

 was that of the world for nearly two thousand years. 



To the examination of this very point the celebrated 

 Francesco Eedi, physician to the Grranddukes Ferdinand 

 II. and Cosmo III. of Tuscany, and a member of the 

 Academy del Cimento, addressed himself in 1668. He 

 had seen the maggots of putrefying flesh, and reflected 

 on their possible origin. But he was not content with 

 mere reflection, nor with the theoretic guesswork which 

 his predecessors had founded upon their imperfect obser- 

 vations. Watching meat during its passage from fresh- 

 ness to decay, prior to the appearance of maggots he 

 invariably observed flies buzzing round the meat and fre- 



