[…] the opponents of the theory of "spontaneous generation" amusing themselves with declaring that the learned "preparator" at the Museum of the Garden of Plants (son of the inventor of that famous theory) is going off to "the Phœnician City" to favor the assembled savans With an account of his efforts, hitherto unsuccessful, to hatch three crocodile-eggs (two of them white and one red), presented to him last winter by a traveller returned from the East, with a view to "dotating" France with a new article of food—stewed crocodile being declared by the said traveller to be both palatable and nutritious in a high degree.
Source: wiktionary