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234 REMARKS ON SOME DIOICIOUS PLANTS. 
much higher order of being. I believe it is the same in the vegetable 
kingdom, for where the sexes are separated there must be more diffi- 
culty in breeding, the act of fertilization depending upon external, 
or perhaps accidental circumstances. The lower any object is in the 
scale of nature, either animal or vegetable, the more profusely it mul- 
tiplies itself; whilst the higher, the greater difficulty there is in breed- 
ing. Take horses, for example. Every one knows the difficulty there 
is of increasing the number of highly-trained animals. Even in man, 
as a rule, the lowest and most debased races increase most rapidly. 
The higher order of animals produce one at a birth, the lower hundreds 
or thousands. The same applies to vegetable life; the lower the 
plants the more profuse the breeding, as in the toadstool, with its mil- 
lions of spores; and in the opposite degree those flowering plants are 
the highest that produce the least number of seeds, or that have the 
greatest difficulty in propagating themselves. 
ut the argument cannot stop here, and I may be allowed to carry 
it to its extreme consequences. If all living things are gradually 
casting off the hermaphrodite condition for one of a single sex to 
each, what reason is there for supposing that this is anything more 
than a single step in one complete design, and that the next is the 
obliteration of sexuality altogether! If at one step we move from 
the object that breeds millions to the creature that only produces oue 
at a birth, the next step where reproduction by sexuality ceases alto- 
gether is comparatively easy. It is clear that the less things are able 
to increase, the less necessity there is for death, as one set of beings 
have not to perish to make room for another. It is well known to 
gardeners that the life of a plant may be prolonged, and its nature 
strengthened and improved, by not allowing it to exhaust itself in pro- 
ducing seeds. Will not the same apply to all nature? Will not, by 
the gradual obliteration of all sexuality, races of plants and animals be 
gradually improved, till some point is reached when the necessity for 
reproduction entirely ceases, and the change of form called death be- 
come unnecessary ? 
