Note 803 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
Footnote 803: (return) The doctrine of "spontaneous generations" is still more explicitly announced in book ii. "Manifest appearances compel us to believe that animals, though possessed of sense, are generated from senseless atoms. For you may observe living worms proceed from foul dung, when the earth, moistened with immoderate showers, has contracted a kind of putrescence; and you may see all other things change themselves, similarly, into other things."--Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things," bk. i. l. 867-880.