1 68 From Matter to Man. 



themselves dual — metallic and non-metallic. From 

 the affinities of these two classes of atoms the gradu- 

 ally increasing complexity of sexual mechanism and 

 action may be traced, from the simple union of oxygen 

 and hydrogen into water, to the fertilisation of the 

 vegetal female ovule by the protoplasm of a male 

 pollen grain. 



Again, although sex in the higher organisms seems 

 chiefly a differentiation in form, yet fundamentally 

 its action, as in impregnation, is solely a chemical 

 process ; hence, if we traced all the phenomena of 

 vegetal reproduction from conjugation in algae to 

 cross-fertilisation in orchids, the fundamental function 

 of sex in each and all would only resolve itself into a 

 chemical or sexual union of dually reciprocal elements. 



Section y. The Evolution of Vegetal Species : 

 That infinite varieties of every species of plant exist 

 is admitted ; that many of these varieties have been 

 evolved by natural selection is known ; that some even 

 of the more striking varieties have been differentiated 

 during the march of time into distinct species is also 

 probable ; and that all genera, orders, and classes of 

 vegetals have been — as Darwinians allege — trans- 

 formed from the one into the other by regular genea- 

 logical sequence and solely from one primordial cell, 

 may be granted as possible : but on the wider assump- 

 tion that each plant possessed numberless parent 

 types capable of infinite variation, we stand on more 

 solid ground. According to the accepted " cell 



