Note 3 — PREFATORY NOTE.

I may remark parenthetically that Professor Virchow's statement of the attitude of Harvey towards equivocal generation is strangely misleading. For Harvey, as every student of his works knows, believed in equivocal generation; and, in the sense in which he uses the word ovum, "nempe substantiam quandam corpoream vitam habentem potentia," the truth of the axiom "omne vivum ex ovo," popularly ascribed to him, has in no wise been affected by the discoveries of later days in the manner asserted by Professor Virchow.