BONNET. 



these embryons . . . must possess a greater degree of minute- 

 ness than that which was ascribed to the devils who tempted St. 

 Anthony, of whom twenty thousand were said to have been able to 

 dance a saraband on the point of a needle without the least incom- 

 moding each other." 



We become more charitable in judging Bonnet as 

 a man of science when we learn that, beginning in 

 1740, while associated with Reaumur in the Univer- 

 sity of Geneva, he made a series of admirable obser- 

 vations and original discoveries, such as those upon 

 ' parthenogenesis ' in the Aphides or Tree Lice, the 

 mode of reproduction in the Bryozoa, the respira- 

 tion of insects, and that it was the unfortunate fail- 

 ure of his eyesight in 1 754 which turned him from 

 observation to speculation. His speculations were 

 as unsound as his observations had been sound and 

 valuable. 



Bonnet, in 1 764, published his Contemplations de 

 la Nature, and in 1768 his Paling'en'esie Philoso- 

 phique, ou id'ees sur Fetat passe et sur I'etat des Etres 

 vivants. The latter work is dedicated " to the 

 friends of Truth and of Virtue, who are mine." 



Bonnet found his inspiration in the law of Conti- 

 nuity of Leibnitz, and along different lines of rea- 

 soning he reached the same conclusion as the great 

 German philosopher, that no such thing as genera- 

 tion, in the strict sense of the term, occurs in 

 Nature. Leibnitz' law of Continuity he expands 

 into the idea that all creation forms a continuous 

 chain from the mineral up to the top of the animal 



