68 



Wherefore it may be concluded that the presence of the 

 spermatic force is essential to the process of growth by the 

 multiplication of cells, and that the phenomena of the for- 

 mation of the germ-mass are the provision for the presence 

 of that force. It is only therefore a question of the degree 

 of spermatic force which may suffice for any of the descend- 

 ants of the primary impregnated germ- vesicle, in order to 

 recommence and repeat the process to which the cell itself 

 owed its origin. The result of such process would be 

 always the same : the formation or accumulation of a 

 germ-mass ; that is to say, a mass of cells prepared as the 

 materials upon which the plastic force might operate in the 

 formation and adjustment of the different tissues and organs 

 of a new individual. 



What then might be expected to be the conditions of 

 structure essential to the renewal of the process of forming 

 a germ-mass in an individual organism, independently of 

 the primal act of impregnation ? Obviously the retention 

 of some of the progeny of the primary germ-vesicle with 

 their inherited spermatic virtue. 



Now we have seen that the power of propagating by 

 gemmation and spontaneous fission is in the ratio of the 

 retention of germ-cells, as such, in the constitution of the 

 individual first developed from the primary germ-mass. 

 Plants are more cellular than animals; monads than rotifers; 

 polypes than echinoderms ; the tape worms than the round 

 worms ; the radiata than the articulata and mollusca ; the 

 invertebrata than the vertebrata. 



to a distance from the scene of life of the parent. A very peculiar 

 odour has always been recognized as one of the characteristics of the 

 semen, which leads me to quote the following remark by Ehrenberg : 

 "Vast numbers of the Euglena viridis, dying contracted into a ball, 

 form a delicate green pellicle on the water, which first exhales, as du- 

 ring life, a spermatic and then a mouldy odour : sinks during cold, rises 

 during warmth, is decomposed into minute corpuscles and evolves gas, 

 and the mass finally is resolved into a greyish dust which contains 

 very minute ovules without chorion." 



