232 BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS vill 



the most enlightened nations, eighteen hundred 

 years ago ; and it remained the accepted doctrine 

 of learned and unlearned Europe, through the 

 Middle Ages, down even to the seventeenth 

 century. 



It is commonly counted among the many merits 

 of our great countryman, Harvey, that he was the 

 first to declare the opposition of fact to venerable 

 authority in this, as in other matters ; but I can 

 discover no justification for this widespread 

 notion. After careful search through the " Exer- 

 citationes de Generatione," the most that appears 

 clear to me is, that Harvey believed all animals 

 and plants to spring from what he terms a " prim- 

 ordium vegetale" a phrase which may nowadays be 

 rendered " a vegetative germ " ; and this, he says, 

 is " omfcrme" or " egg-like " ; not, he is careful to 

 add, that it necessarily has the shape of an egg, but 

 because it has the constitution and nature of one. 

 That this "primordium cviforme " must needs, in 

 all cases, proceed from a living parent is nowhere 

 expressly maintained by Harvey, though such an 

 opinion may be thought to be implied in one or two 

 passages ; while, on the other hand, he does, more 

 than once, use language which is consistent only 

 with a full belief in spontaneous or equivocal 

 generation. 1 In fact, the main concern of Harvey's 



1 See the following passage in Exercitatio I. : "Item sponte 

 nascentia dicuntur ; non quod ex putredine oriunda sint, sed 

 quod casu, naturae sponte, et sequivoca (ut aiunt) generatione, a 



