554 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



in the simplest organisms, all those various specialized 

 parts with which they have become familiar in higher 

 organisms ! The venerable Ehrenberg was not satisfied 

 unless he could find in a ciliated Infusorium, a mouth, 

 esophagus, stomach, and anus ; together with heart and 

 circulatory system, as well as male and female sexual 

 organs. Whilst we may smile now at the simplicity 

 which dictated all these expectations, it must be con- 

 fessed that the postulation of the existence of a sexual 

 process in all organisms, and the distinction between 

 true and false processes of generation which have been 

 consequently advanced, are founded upon similarly ob- 

 solete points of view. So that if a sexual process of 

 multiplication did exist from the first, it would be 

 a great difficulty in the way of those doctrines of 

 Evolution to which, in other respects, Prof. Huxley and 

 Dr. Carpenter have for many years given in their 

 adhesion l . 



1 There can be little doubt that the process of ' conjugation ' supplies 

 us with one of the first steps which gradually lead on in the direction of 

 more specialized modes of sexual reproduction. But why, it may be 

 asked, should the matter within two contiguous cells of a Spirogyra ever 

 tend to fuse in this manner ? One can only suppose that the matter 

 within such cells must have assumed some ' polar ' condition in which it 

 becomes capable of exercising an attractive influence upon other more or 

 less similar matter, and of being acted upon in turn. It is, therefore, 

 most interesting to find that undoubted attractions and repulsions do 

 occur amongst higher plants even although in them such movements 

 towards or from one another have nothing to do with the process of 

 reproduction. Thus Mr. A. Henry has pointed out (' Gardener's Chro- 

 nicle,' Dec. 9, 1871) that certain climbing plants display a partiality for 

 plants of some other species by stretching out their tendrils or branches 



