NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 237 



Francesco Eedi was born in Arezzo, Tuscany, in 1626, sixteen 

 years after the publication of Galileo's ' Sydereus Nurrcius,' and 

 six years before his ' Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican 

 Systems,' at a time " when the twenty-century old authority of 

 Aristotle was still undiminished," while Bruno, Campanella, 

 Varini, and Kepler — all critics of Aristotle — had made straighter 

 the way for Eedi. 



Eedi was mentally brought up under the care of the Jesuit 

 Fathers, his parents were of the provincial nobility, and his 

 father was a well-known physician. Francesco became a power 

 at the Court of Ferdinand II., and of his son and successor, the 

 bigoted Cosimo III. Although Eedi never lost the friendship of 

 the Jesuit Fathers, he effectually disposed of another Aristotelian 

 theory or acceptance — that of spontaneous generation in animal 

 life. This is his fame and the reputation of his work. He 

 commenced by simple experimental methods, first, with three 

 dead Snakes, which were placed in an open box to decay ; and 

 we need not recapitulate the discovery of "worms," their subse- 

 quent pupal condition, and the ultimate emergence of flies. 

 Even then he began to believe that the worms were derived 

 directly from the droppings of flies, and was still more confirmed 

 in this belief by having observed that before the meat grew 

 wormy flies had hovered over it, of the same kind as those that 

 later bred in it ; whilst he further stated : " Nor am I in 

 the least degree convinced by the authoritative statement of 

 Father Honore Fabri, of the venerable Company of Jesus, 

 who asserts, in his book on the ' Generation of Animals,' that 

 flies always drop eggs and never worms." It is clear that at 

 this time Eedi was behind the outlook of Fabri, and had yet 

 much to learn. 



The argument used by Eedi against the spontaneous genera- 

 tion of bees is, of course, more or less vitiated by his confusion 

 of the drone-fly (Eristalis) with the bee (Apis), and he affirmed 

 against the opinion that bees originated in the flesh of bulls, 

 even though " the learned Father Honore" Fabri, whose famous 

 works will never be buried in the gloom of oblivion," reiterates 

 this belief. But here our experimental observer was " sharply 

 reminded" of the fourteenth chapter of the Book pf Judges, con- 

 taining the observations of Samson on this matter. Of the 



