194 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 4 
forms a transition to sexual reproduction, namely, the 
formation of germ-cells ( Monosporogonia), which is often 
briefly called formation of spores (sporogonia). In this case 
it is no longer a group of cells, but a single cell, which 
separates itself from the surrounding cells in the interior of 
the producing organism, and which only becomes ‘further 
developed after it has come out of its parent. After this 
germ-cell, or monospore (or, briefly, spore), has left the 
parental individual, it multiplies by division, and thus 
forms a many-celled organism, which by growth and 
gradual development attains the hereditary qualities of the 
parental organism. This occurs very generally among lower 
plants (Cryptogama). 
Although the formation of germ-cells very much resembles 
the formation of germ buds, it evidently and very essentially 
differs from the latter, and also from the other forms of non- 
sexual propagation which have previously been mentioned, 
by the fact that only a very small portion of the producing 
organism takes part in the propagation and, accordingly, in 
the transmission by inheritance. In the case of self-division, 
where the whole organism falls into two halves, in the 
formation of buds, where a considerable portion of the whole 
body, already more or less developed, separates from the 
producing individual, we easily understand that the forms 
and vital phenomena should be the same in the producing 
and produced organism. It is much more difficult to under- 
stand in the formation of germ-buds, and more difficult still 
in the formation of germ-cells, how this very small, quite 
undeveloped portion of the body, this group of cells, or this 
single cell, not only directly takes with it certain parental 
qualities into its independent existence, but also after its 
