CHAPTER VIL 



GENESIS. 



§ 75. Hamng concluded what constitutes an individual, 

 we are in a position to deal with the multiplication of in- 

 dividuals. For this, the title Genesis is here chosen, as being 

 the most comprehensive title — the least specialized in its 

 meaning. By some biologists. Generation has been used to 

 signify one method of multiplication, and Reproduction to 

 signify another method ; and each of these words has been 

 thus rendered in some degree unfit to signify multiplication 

 in general. 



Here the reader is indirectly introduced to the fact, that 

 the production of new^ organisms is carried on in fundament- 

 ally unlike ways. Up to quite recent times, it was believed, 

 even by naturalists, that all the various processes of multipli- 

 cation observable in different kinds of organisms, have one 

 essential character in common : it was supposed that in every 

 species, the successive generations avQ alike. It has now been 

 proved, however, that in plants, and in numerous animals, the 

 successive generations are not alike ; that from one generation 

 there proceeds another whose members differ more or less 

 in structure from their parents ; that these produce others 

 like themselves, or like their parents, or like neither ; but 

 that eventually, the original form re- appears. Instead of 

 there being, as in the cases most familiar to us, a constant 

 recurrence of the same form, there is a cyclical recurrence of 



