No one can pretend to say that a fish is ever killed by heat, for many kinds of fish, in the middle of summer, and in the burning heat of the sun, do either play, as it were, on the surface of the water, or hide themselves under the leaves, weeds, or other substances at the bottom.

For my part, I hold it equally impossible for a small shellfish to be produced without generation as for a whale to have its origin from the mud.

We will admit that, out of the mud or sand which is found on the seashore or the beds of our rivers, at low water, shellfish or testaceous animals come forth, but it does not from thence by any means follow that they are produced without any regular course of generation.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Quotes