CHAPTER VII. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS 

 AND ANIMALS. 



THE nutritive functions of digestion, circulation, and 

 assimilation, have for their object the support of life, by 

 furnishing to organized beings without ceasing, new and 

 proper materials for the development of their organs, and 

 the reparation of the waste occasioned by the movements 

 of anirnality. But it is the nature of all organized beings 

 to have but a limited existence. Their organs finally lose 

 the faculty of sustaining life, and the cessation of their 

 functions brings on death. All the organized beings exist- 

 ing on the earth, end by disappearing from its surface ; 

 and their races would speedily become extinct, if nature 

 had not given them the means of reproducing and multi- 

 plying themselves. 



Through reproduction the power of life is made to pass 

 without ceasing into other bodies. Our parents are re- 

 produced in us as we are engendered in our descendants. 

 Thus the individual perishes, but the species is continued. 



Wherever there is life, there is attraction. The appear- 

 ance of matter in organized beings implies a draught on 

 the resources of nature. Each germinating seed exercises 

 a special attraction on the earth and atmosphere, and dead 

 inorganic matter collects around it, to be embued with 

 vitality and moulded into an organized form. 



But there is only a limited amount of organizable mate- 

 rial existing in nature, and her resources would therefore 

 be speedily exhausted were there not an equivalent amount 



