GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 125 



Nothing is ever lost by nature. Death is the agent em- 

 ployed to enforce the claim, and we must surrender what 

 we have appropriated. We may be unwilling to pay the 

 debt; but in this instance at least no fraud can be prac- 

 tised. We may cheat our fellow-men out of " their own," 

 but nature, never. 



It is this ceaseless return of organizable material which 

 keeps up the continuity of the stream of life and renders 

 the fountain inexhaustible. Hence the matter of which 

 every animal and vegetable was formed in the earliest 

 ages is now in existence. We ourselves are composed of 

 matter as old as the creation ; in time, we must suffer in 

 our turn, decomposition, as every living body has done 

 before us, and thus resign the matter of which we are 

 composed, to form new existences. 



The reproduction of organized beings takes place in a 

 variety of ways. We have already described the gemmi- 

 parous and fissiparous modes, which take place, the former 

 among compound zoophytes, and the latter among the in- 

 fusoria. These two modes of multiplication require no 

 special organs for the formation of the new individuals, 

 since in the first case they originate on all the points of 

 the exterior surface of the body, and in the second, it is 

 its totality which divides into fragments, each becoming a 

 new individual. 



But it is not in this manner that the generality of plants 

 and animals are reproduced. In the immense majority of 

 cases organized bodies, animals and plants, reproduce 

 themselves' by means of fecundated germs which we call 

 embryos. These embryos form in a particular organ 

 which is called an ovule, in consequence of receiving from 

 another special organ, an influence which impresses on 

 them the vital movement, or in other words, fecundates 

 11* 



