tro
ufizio nella generazione degl' insetti, se non d'apprestare un luogo o un
nido proporzionato, in cui dagli animali nel tempo della figliatura sieno
portati, e partoriti i vermi, o l' uova o l' altre semenze dei vermi, i
quali tosto che nati sono, trovano in esso nido un sufficiente alimento
abilissimo per nutricarsi: e se in quello non son portate dalle madri
queste suddette semenze, niente mai, e replicatamente niente, vi s'
ingegneri e nasca."--REDI, _Esperienze_, pp. 14-16.]

In the seventeenth century, as I have said, the latter was the dominant
view, sanctioned alike by antiquity and by authority; and it is
interesting to observe that Redi did not escape the customary tax upon a
discoverer of having to defend himself against the charge of impugning
the authority of the Scriptures;[5] for his adversaries declared that the
generation of bees from the carcase of a dead lion is affirmed, in the
Book of Judges, to have been the origin of the famous riddle with which
Samson perplexed the Philistines:--

Out of the eater came forth meat,
And out of the strong came forth sweetness.

[Footnote 5: "Molti, e molti altri ancora vi potrei annoverare, se non
fossi chiamato a rispondere alle rampogne di alcuni, che bruscamente mi
rammentano cio, che si legge nel capitolo quattordicesimo del sacrosanto
Libro de' giudici ... "--REDI, _loc. cit._ p. 45.]

Against all odds, however, Redi, strong with the strength of demonstrable
fact, did splendid battle for Biogenesis; but it is remarkable that he
held the doctrine in a sense which, if he lead lived in these times,
would have infallibly caused him to be classed among the defenders of
"spontaneous generation." "Omne vivum ex vivo," "no life without
antecedent life," aphoristically sums up Redi's doctrine; but he went no
further. It is most remarkable evidence of the philosophic caution and
impartiality of his mind, that although he had speculatively anticipated
the manner in which grubs really are deposited in fruits and in the galls
of plants, he deliberately admits that the evidence is insufficient to
bear him out; and he therefore prefers the supposition that they are
generated by a modification of the living substance of the plants
themselves. Indeed, he regards these vegetable growths as organs, by
means of which the plant gives rise to an animal, and looks upon this
production of specific animals as the final cause of the galls and of, at
any rate, some fruits. And he p