United States or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That the grubs found in galls are no product of the plants on which the galls grow, but are the result of the introduction of the eggs of insects into the substance of these plants, was made out by Vallisnieri, Réaumur, and others, before the end of the first half of the eighteenth century.
But if we turn to pathology, it offers us some remarkable approximations to true Xenogenesis. As I have already mentioned, it has been known since the time of Vallisnieri and of Réaumur, that galls in plants, and tumours in cattle, are caused by insects, which lay their eggs in those parts of the animal or vegetable frame of which these morbid structures are outgrowths.
The application of the microscope to anatomy in the hands of Grew, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Lyonnet, Vallisnieri, Réaurnur, and other illustrious investigators of nature of that day, displayed such a complexity of organisation in the lowest and minutest forms, and everywhere revealed such a prodigality of provision for their multiplication by germs of one sort or another, that the hypothesis of Abiogenesis began to appear not only untrue, but absurd; and, in the middle of the eighteenth century, when Needham and Buffon took up the question, it was almost universally discredited.
Word Of The Day