

THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 253 



____ 



Aristotle believed in the c spontaneous ' origination 

 of eels and other fish out of the slimy mud of rivers 

 and marshes; also that certain insects took origin 

 from the vernal dew on plants; and that lice were 

 spontaneously engendered in the flesh of animals. 

 He believed also that animals might proceed from 

 vegetables that the caterpillars of certain butterflies, 

 for instance, were actually the products of the plants 

 upon which they feed. Some of these beliefs were 

 echoed by Lucretius l and Ovid more than two hundred 

 years later. When the latter of these poets had de- 

 scribed the means adopted. by Deucalion and Pyrrha 

 for repeopling the world after the deluge how the 

 backwardly-thrown stones, the bones of mother earth, 

 grew into human beings he thus accounts for the 

 origin of all the lower living things: 



' Caetera diversis tellus animalia formis 

 Sponte sua peperit, postquam vetus humor ab igne 

 Percaluit Solis, ccenumque udaeque paludes 

 Intumuere sestu : fecundaque semina rerum 

 Vivaci nutrita solo, ceu matris in alvo, 

 Creverunt, faciemque aliquam cepere morando. 

 Sic, ubi deseruit madidos septemfluus agros 

 Nilus, et antique sua flumina reddidit alveo, 

 JEthereoque recens exarsit sidere limus; 

 'Plurima cultores versis animalia glebis 

 Inveniunt, et in his quaedam modo coepta per ipsum 

 Nascendi spatium, quaedam imperfecta, suisque 

 Trunca vident numeris: et eodem corpore saepe 

 Altera pars vivit, rudis est pars altera tellus 2 .' 



1 De Rerum Natura/ lib. v. 793. 



2 This passage (Metamorph. bk. i. 416-429) has been thus translated 

 by Dryden : 



