(after forming a new skin for the fourth time) a living daughter, and
during the next twenty days ninety-four other daughters; and that all
of them went on to reproduce in the same way without any contact with
males. It seemed as if this furnished an irrefutable proof of the
truth of the scatulation theory, as it was held by the Ovulists; it is
not surprising to find that the theory then secured general
acceptance.

This was the condition of things when suddenly, in 1759, Caspar
Friedrich Wolff appeared, and dealt a fatal blow at the whole
preformation theory with his new theory of epigenesis. Wolff, the son
of a Berlin tailor, was born in 1733, and went through his scientific
and medical studies, first at Berlin under the famous anatomist
Meckel, and afterwards at Halle. Here he secured his doctorate in his
twenty-sixth year, and in his academic dissertation (November 28th,
1759), the Theoria generationis, expounded the new theory of a real
development on a basis of epigenesis. This treatise is, in spite of
its smallness and its obscure phraseology, one of the most valuable in
the whole range of biological literature. It is equally distinguished
for the mass of new and careful observations it contains, and the
far-reaching and pregnant ideas which the author everywhere extracts
from his observations and builds into a luminous and accurate theory
of generation. Nevertheless, it met with no success at the time.
Although scientific studies were then assiduously cultivated owing to
the impulse given by Linne--although botanists and zoologists were no
longer counted by dozens, but by hundreds, hardly any notice was taken
of Wolff's theory. Even when he established the truth of epigenesis by
the most rigorous observations, and demolished the airy structure of
the preformation theory, the "exact" scientist Haller proved one of
the most strenuous supporters of the old theory, and rejected Wolff's