At this time another priest, named Needham, a devout Catholic who liked to think he could do experiments, was becoming notorious in England and Ireland, claiming that little microscopic animals were generated marvelously in mutton gravy. Needham sent his experiments to the Royal Society, and the learned Fellows deigned to be impressed. He told them how he had taken a quantity of mutton gravy hot from the fire, and put the gravy in a bottle, and plugged the bottle up tight with a cork, so that no little animals or their eggs could possibly get into the gravy from the air. Next he even went so far as to heat the bottle and its mutton gravy in hot ashes. “Surely,” said the good Needham, “this will kill any little animals or their eggs, that might remain in the flask.” He put this gravy flask away for a few days, then pulled the cork--and marvel of marvels--when he examined the stuff inside with his lens, he found it swarming with animalcules. “A momentous discovery, this,” cried Needham to the Royal Society, “these little animals can only have come from the juice of the gravy. Here is a real experiment showing that life _can_ come spontaneously from dead stuff!” He told them mutton gravy wasn’t necessary--a soup made from seeds or almonds would do the same trick. 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!