52 
les yeux du corps‘). And nothing proves better how difficult 
it was to demonstrate that the smallest animals are born exactly 
in the same way as the large ones, than the error in which, 
to the shame of human intellect, Redi himself has fallen, when 
he found it necessary to explain the appearance of insects in 
the galls that occur on certain plants and trees, by the hypo- 
thesis of a soul in those plants, which he had invented for that 
purpose; he, the declared enemy of superstition, and who knew 
so well how to refute it!“ (Réaumur alludes here to the pas- 
sages on pages 109 and 113 of Redi’s Esperienze etc.; pages 
234—244 of the Latin translation; comp. the next Supplement.) 
IV. 
The inconsistency of Redi, in regard to the principle: 
omne vivum ex Ovo. 
The learned Parisian professor Peter Gassendi (1592—1658) 
,quel sublime scrittore, quel fulgidissimo lume delle scuole mo- 
derne,*, as Redi, somewhat ironically, calls him, attempted to 
explain in the following fashion-the use of thyme and cassia, 
recommended by Virgil and Florentinus for the process of the 
Bugonia: These plants contain, according to Gassendi, seeds, 
most prolific of bees (,semi abilissime alla generazione delle 
pecchie“); their perfume penetrates the carcase, and predisposes 
the rottenness to assume the shape of these industrious animal- 
cules! (,penetrando nel fracidume di quel cadavero, lo dispon- 
gono a vestir la forma di queglindustriosi animaletti‘). 
Redi receives this explanation of Gassendi with his usual 
sneer, and yet, such is the weakness of the human intellect, 
that the same Redi, instead of consistently maintaining the 
principle omne vivwm ex ovo, uses precisely the same hypothesis 
as Gassendi in a case where his powers of observation failed, 
and the principle seemed inapplicable. His intellect was staggered 
by the difficulty of explaining the existence of live worms 
within hermetically sealed galls on plants, and he at once 
