﻿100 CLEMENS' SYNOPSIS OF 



manifesting itself, or what fractional part of the organic cycle is passed over by the 

 unaided impulse toward developement, in the great majority of animal bodies. The 

 fact now indisputably established by Von Siebold,* that the eggs of a virgin moth 

 secluded from access to the male with the most watchful and guarded care, unques- 

 tionably produce a progeny of new beings indistinguishable from those which had 

 preceded them, determines the possibility of structural evolution through all the 

 terms of at least one entire cycle, independently of any influence derived from the 

 sperm cells of the male. The regenerative tendency in the ovum must hence be a 

 specific endowment, resulting in the production of a perfect being as a general law, 

 only when aided by the sperm cells of the male, but analogous in its nature to repro- 

 duction by gemmation, to the formation of new beings from the division of a perfect 

 Hydra, to the evolution of new members to replace those which have been lost. In 

 a word, regeneration is a manifestation of continuous growth in species, in their re- 

 spective cycles of organic evolution, around which the structural processes revolve and 

 repeat continuously and precisely, what had been accomplished by pre-existing repre- 

 sentative bodies, without power to exceed or restrict a designated and preordained 

 orbit. And for each, there is a persisting life, never intermitted for an instant of 

 time, running through a chain of representative bodies, and reaching from the first 

 created conception not only to the present time, but into that future when organic 

 existence shall have terminated. This produces, and must continue to produce suc- 

 cessive representatives, which harmonize and agree with the original and inceptive 

 organism, and are not only similar to it, but identical amongst themselves. The 

 mind can detect no essential differences on which to establish distinctions, and we re- 

 cognize them as the same beings, the same conception, whatever may be their geo- 

 graphical origin ; all structural differences have disappeared, and investigation proves 

 that each individual repeats and reiterates one and the same biography with all its 

 distinctive peculiarities. 



The identity of natural bodies of the same species must, however, be received with 

 certain limitations. In no portion of the organic, or even the physical world, does 

 Nature work within the limits of inflexibly parallel lines, but mingles with her 

 laws of harmony or invariability, laws of disorder, which affect the most stupendous 

 and apparently most stable of her works, as well as the most humble and insignifi- 

 cant, if any thing in Nature can be so regarded. Thus, in considering specific life in 

 the humble forms under view, we must allow a limit of variability or disorder, by which 

 constancy in results are affected or apparently deranged, but within circumscribed 

 boundaries. The subject of variation in insects has been so imperfectly investigated, 

 and so many startling theories have been promulgated respecting it, founded on what 

 I must regard as mistaken conceptions respecting the nature of species, that although 



*True Parthenogensis in Moths and Bees, London, 1857. 



