GENERATION OF INSECTS. 1 1 



These pandorinia he elsewhere describes as probably 

 nothing more than ' animated scions of Zoocarpae' 

 (propagules animes des Zoocarpes.)* It would be 

 unprofitable to go into any lengthened discussion upon 

 this mysterious subject ; and we have" great doubts 

 whether the ocular demonstration by the microscope 

 would succeed except in the hands of a disciple of the 

 school. Even with naturalists, whose business it is to 

 deal with facts, the reason is often wonderfully influ- 

 enced by the imagination. 



But the question immediately before us happily does 

 not involve these recondite discussions ; for if even 

 pandorinia and other animalcules were proved beyond 

 a doubt to originate in the play of chemical affinities 

 or galvanic actions (a more refined process, it must 

 be confessed, than Kircher's chopped snakes), it would 

 not affect our doctrine that all insects are hatched from 

 eggs : for no naturalist of the present day classes 

 such animalcules among insects. Leaving animal- 

 cules and zoophytes, therefore, out of the question, 

 we have only to examine such branches of the theory 

 of spontaneous generation as seem to involve the pro- 

 pagation of genuine insects, like the fancies about 

 putrefaction which we have seen refuted. 



The notion that small insects, such as aphides 

 and the leaf-rolling caterpillars, are spread about, or 

 rather generated, by what is termed blight (possibly 

 from the Belgic blinkan, to strike with lightning), is 

 almost universally believed even by the most intel- 

 ligent, if they have not particularly studied the hab- 

 its of insects. Mr Main, of Chelsea, an ingenious 

 and well-informed gardener and naturalist, describes 

 this as an ' easterly wind, attended by a blue mist. 

 The latter is called a blight, and many people 

 imagine that the aphides are waited through the 



* Diet. Class., Art. Pandoriir'es. 



