234 BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS vill 



simplicity of his experiments, and the clearness 

 of his arguments, gained for his views, and 

 for their consequences, almost universal accept- 

 ance. 



Redi did not trouble himself much with specu- 

 lative considerations, but attacked particular cases 

 of what was supposed to be " spontaneous genera- 

 tion" experimentally. Here are dead animals, or 

 pieces of meat, says he ; I expose them to the air 

 in hot weather, and in a few days they swarm with 

 maggots. You tell me that these are generated 

 in the dead flesh; but if I put similar bodies, 

 while quite fresh, into a jar, and tie some fine 

 gauze over the top of the jar, not a maggot makes 

 its appearance, while the dead substances, never- 

 theless, putrefy just in the same way as before. 

 It is obvious, therefore, that the maggots are not 

 generated by the corruption of the meat ; and that 

 the cause of their formation must be a some- 

 thing which is kept away by gauze. But gauze 

 will not keep away aeriform bodies, or fluids. 

 This something must, therefore, exist in the 

 form of solid particles too big to get through 

 the gauze. Nor is one long left in doubt 

 what these solid particles are ; for the blow- 

 flies, attracted by the odour of the meat, swarm 

 round the vessel, and, urged by a powerful 

 but in this case misleading instinct, lay eggs out 

 of which maggots are immediately hatched, upon 

 the gauze. The conclusion, therefore, is un- 



