Excerpt from Flora and Fauna: Living Animals The existence of entozoa, or of animals living within other species has, from the most remote time, attracted attention, on account of the peculiarity of their posi tion, the unpleasant ideas associated with them, the sufferings they frequently induce, and the difficulty Of explaining their mode Of origin. The entozoa have always constituted the strongest support Of the doctrine of equivocal or spontaneous generation, one which has found distinguished disciples even to the present time; but since the days when barnacles were supposed to originate from the foam Of the ocean, and ducks and geese to be developed from barnacles, this belief has been so weakened by the accumulation of facts, undenied and undeniable by the supporters Of the doctrine, that it bids fair soon to be little more than an echo of the past. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.