68 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. [ll. 



ification in its "molecular constitution," an assumption 

 which was by no means novel when Weismann an- 

 nounced it. "The exact manner in which we imagine 

 the subsequent differentiation of the colony to be poten- 

 tially present in the reproductive cell," he writes, "be- 

 comes a matter of comparatively small importance. It 

 may consist in a different molecular arrangement, or in 

 some change of chemical constitution, or it may be due 

 to both these causes combined." In whatever manner 

 the germ -plasm receives its somatic influences, there 

 must be a direct connection between the two, and it is 

 quite as easy to assume the existence of gemmules as 

 any less tangible influence. I am not arguing in favor 



of generations, a sex-bearing generation being followed by a sexless generation. 

 In certain plants, as tlie ferns, tlie sex-generation soon disappears and tiie sexless 

 generation leads a wholly independent life; this sex-generation is the prothallus 

 of the fern, and the sexless generation is the foliaeeous fern-plant. But in cer- 

 tain other plants, as the mosses, tlie sexless generation remains attached to or 

 incorporated with the sex-generation. Many of these tiowerless plants produce a 

 prothallus from the spore, and upon this prothallus are two minute unlike organs, 

 one female in function, because it develops the succeeding generation, and the 

 other male in function, because it produces the cells which fertilize the female 

 cells. Recent morphological studies have shown that in the tlowering plants the 

 asexual generation is enormously developed, and is "the plant," whilst the sex- 

 generation is reduced to the minimum a:ivl is represented by a female organ 

 developed within the ovule and a male organ developed in the pollen-grain. The 

 prothallus within the ovule encloses the germ of the asexual generation in its 

 fertilized sexual cell, and this germ becomes the embryo of the seed; and the 

 prothallus is absorbed, or else it remains as the albumen — or endosi>erm or i)eri- 

 sperm — of the seed. 



This very brief and imiwrfect outline is sufficient to bring the point which I 

 have in mind before the reader, namely, how far can we use the terms " male" 

 and "female," and what must be the common language of the sex-relation in 

 plants ? Some morphologists now object to calling a stamen a male organ, or a 

 pistil a female organ; and they base their reform upon the undisputed morpho- 

 logical fact that the male sex-phase of the plant is comprised within the short 

 span and function of the generative cell developing from the pollen grain, and 

 that the female phase is associated only with the development of the prothallus 

 iu the ovule. It should be pointed out, however, that the discovery of these 

 morphological facts does not in the least shift the old-time attribute of maleness 

 as applied to the stamen or of femaleness as applied to the pistil; for whether 

 the pollen grain is sperm, as older naturalists supposed, or whether it is a spore 



