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on tables and chairs, they cluttered the floor so it was hard to walk around.

"Now, we'll boil a whole series of these flasks different lengths of time, and see which one generates the most little animals," he said, and then doused one set of his soups in boiling water for a few minutes, another for a half hour, another for an hour, and still another for two hours. Instead of sealing them in the flame he plugged them all up with corks—Needham said that was enough—and then he put them carefully away to see what would happen. He waited. He went off fishing and forgot to pull up his rod when a fish bit, he collected minerals for his museum, and forgot to take them home with him. He plotted for higher pay, he said masses, and studied the copulation of frogs and toads—and then disappeared once more to his dim work room with its regiments of bottles and weird machines. He waited.

If Needham were right, the flasks boiled for minutes should be alive with little animals, but the ones boiled for an hour or two hours should be deserted. He pulled out the corks one by one, and looked at the drops of soup through his lens and at last laughed with delight—the bottles that had been boiled for two hours actually had more little animals sporting about in them than the ones he had heated for a few minutes.

"Vegetative Force, what nonsense! so long as you only plug up your flasks with corks the little animals will get in from the air. You can heat your soups till you're black in the face—the microbes will get in just the same and grow, after the broth has cooled."

Spallanzani was triumphant, but then he did the curious thing that only born scientists ever do—he tried to beat his own idea, his darling theory—by experiments he honestly and shrewdly planned to defeat himself. That is science! That is the strange self-forgetting spirit of a few rare men, those curious men to whom truth is more dear than their own cherished whims and wishes. Spallanzani walked up and down his narrow work room, hands behind him, meditating—"Wait,