LAMARCK ^7 



When a drop of rain or dew falls on the dead, dry, twisted 

 glume of the animated oat {Avena sUri/is), it untwists in such a 

 way as to push like the leg of a grasshopper, and, raising the seed, 

 to send it off with a jump. After the seed has fallen, this process 

 is repeated again and again, until the heavy end, where the seed is 

 placed, falls at last into some roughness in the ground, when the 

 glumes begin to kick and to struggle, and, catching in the grass and 

 roots, or on the rough ground, to push the seed down and to 

 plant it. 



The seed is alive, but the glumes are dead and dry, and as com- 

 pletely out of the line of descent to future generations as the dead 

 leaves which drop from a tree. 



Is it not impossible to see how the effects of the use of dead things 

 can be transmitted to their descendants .'* As the properties of the 

 dead glumes are as useful to the species as the dead sticks with 

 which a bird builds its nest are to the nestlings, is it any harder to 

 see how the power to produce glumes which, after they are dead, 

 shall have this useful property, may have arisen through selection, 

 than to understand that an annual plant, which dies before its seeds 

 ripen, may have thus arisen } Many organs have two functions, 

 one accessory to the other. A muscle may be said to serve its 

 purpose when it is used ; and the opinion that its continual use has 

 brought about, or helped to bring about, its useful structure, has 

 seemed plausible to many ; but consider organs such as the reproduc- 

 tive organs. They are useful to their possessors in many ways. The 

 normal development of a male mammal is arrested if they are 

 removed ; so we must believe that this normal development is itself 

 due to some stimulus, which is given, by these organs, to all parts of 

 the body. It may be no harder to imagine the development of the 

 reproductive organs by use, than it is to imagine the development 

 of the muscle in the same way ; for these organs are wonder- 

 fully adapted for gratifying one of the most intense natural passions 

 of their possessors : but this use is only a means to an end ; and it 

 is evident that this end, an offspring, has no existence, as such, when 

 they are used. Their true use is such that it brings to the user 

 care and responsibility and loss of freedom, or even suffering and 

 death. 



In many species, sexual union ends the life of the male ; while 



