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The Royal Society and the whole educated world were excited by Needham's discovery. Here was no Old Wives' tale. Here was hard experimental fact; and the heads of the Society got together and thought about making Needham a Fellow of their remote aristocracy of learning. But away in Italy, Spallanzani was reading the news of Needham's startling creation of little animals from mutton gravy. While he read he knit his brows, and narrowed his dark eyes. At last he snorted: "Animalcules do not arise by themselves from mutton gravy, or almond seeds, or anything else! This fine experiment is a fraud—maybe Needham doesn't know it is—but there's a nigger in the wood pile somewhere. I'm going to find it. . . ."

The devil of prejudice was talking again. Now Spallanzani began to sharpen his razors for his fellow priest—the Italian was a nasty fellow who liked to slaughter ideas of any kind that were contrary to his—he began to whet his knives, I say, for Needham. Then one night, alone in his laboratory, away from the brilliant clamor of his lectures and remote from the gay salons where ladies adored his knowledge, he felt sure he had found the loophole in Needham's experiment. He chewed his quill, he ran his hands through his shaggy hair, "Why have those little animals appeared in that hot gravy, and in those soups made from seeds?" Undoubtedly because Needham didn't heat the bottles long enough, and surely because he didn't plug them tight enough!

Here the searcher in him came forward—he didn't go to his desk to write Needham about it—instead he went to his dusty glass-strewn laboratory, and grabbed some flasks and seeds, and dusted off his microscope. He started out to test, even to defeat, if necessary, his own explanations. Needham didn't heat his soups long enough—maybe there are little animals, or their eggs, which can stand a tremendous heat, who knows? So Spallanzani took some large glass flasks, round bellied with tapering necks. He scrubbed and washed and dried them till they stood in gleaming rows on his table. Then he put seeds