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Show 74 ORIGINATION OF LIVING BEINGS. meat with some very fine gauze, and then he exposed it to the same conditions. The result of this was that no grubs or insects were produced; he proved that the grubs originated from the insects who came and deposited their eggs in the meat, and that the_Y w~re hatched by the heat of the sun. By this kind of Inquiry he thoroughly upset the doctrine of spontaneous gene-ration for his time at least. Th:n came the discovery and application of the microscope to scientific inquiries, ~hich sl~owed to naturalists that besides the organisms whiCh they alreadv knew as living beings and plants, there were an iU:mense number of minute things which could be obtained apparently almost at will from decaying vegetable and animal forms. Thus, if you took ~o~e ordinary black pepper or some hay, and steeped 1t 1n water, you would find in the course of. a few ~ays that the water had become impregnated ·with an Immense number of animalcules swimming about in all directions. From facts of this kind naturalists were led to revive the theory of spontaneous generation. They were }1eaded here by an English naturalist,-Needham,and afterwards in France by the learned B uffon · They said that these things were absolutely begotten in the water of the decaying substances out of which the infusion was made. It did not matter whether you took animal or vegetable matter, you had only to steep it in water and expose it, and you would soon have plenty of animalcules. They made a hypothesis about this which was a very fair one. They said, this matter of the animal world, or of the higher plants, appears to be OltiGINATION Ol!' LIVING BEINGS. 75 dead, but in reality it has a sort of dim life about it, which, if it is placed under fair conditions, will cause it to break up into the forms of these little animalcules, and they will go through their lives in the same way as the animal or plant of which they once formed a part. The question now became very hotly debated. Spallanzani, an Italian naturalist, took up opposite views to those of Needham and Buffon, and by means of certain experiments he showed that it was quite possible to stop the process by boiling the water, and closing the vessel in which it was contained. "Oh ! " said his opponents; "but what do you know you may be doing when you heat the air over the water in this way? You may be destroying some property of the air requisite for the spontaneous generation of the animalcules." However, Spallanzani's views were supposed to be upon the right side, and those of the others fell into discredit; although the fact was that Spallanzani had not made good his views. Well, then, the subject continued to be revived from time to time, and experiments were made by several persons; but these experiments were not altogether satisfactory. It was found that if you put an infusion in which animalcules would appear if it were exposed to the air into a vessel and boiled it, and then sealed up the mouth of the vessel, so that no air, save such as had been heated to 212°, could reach its contents, that then no animalcules would be found ; but if you took the same vessel and exposed the infusion to the air, then you would get animalcules. Furthermore, it was found that if you connected the |