LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



287 





is still too luxuriant ; and a tree wliich has borne a heavy crop should, by 

 this depletion, bear again yet more heavily, instead of being more or less 

 barren next year unless manured. Or the difficulty may also be met by 

 interpreting such vegetative luxuriance, not as a case of 

 higher individuation at all, but simply as a case of asexual 

 multiplication of secondary axes ; or again, and perhaps 

 most simply, by regarding the appearance of sexual re- 

 production on depletion simply as a case of the previously 

 demonstrated antagonism between genesis and growth. 



But again, since fatness is associated v/ith sterility, it , 

 is often argued that high feeding is unfavourable to gene- 

 sis. Obesity, however, is now known to be associated 

 with imperfect assimilation, with physiological impoverish- 

 ment or degeneration, — by no means with that constitu- 

 tional wealth which is favourable to fertility. If, in short, 

 we bear in mind that truly high nutrition means only due 

 abundance of, and due proportion among, all the sub- 

 stances which the organism requires, and that their per- 

 fect assimilation by the organism is also needful, such 

 objections to the generalisation not only disappear, but 

 such a phenomenon as the coincidence of returning fer- 

 tility with disappearing obesity affords a confirmatory 

 argument. 



Organisms having aberrant modes of life are next ap- 

 pealed to for crucial evidence bearing on these general 

 doctrines. Thus, turning to vegetable and animal para- 

 sites, which combine superabundant nutrition with greatly 

 diminished expenditure, the enormous fertility exhibited 

 by all such forms is seen to be the necessary correlative 

 of such a state of nutrition and expenditure, and not 

 merely an acquired adaptation to their peculiar difficulties 

 of survival. The reversion exhibited by so many species 

 (especially among the higher arthropods, e.g., Aphis, 

 Cecidomyia) from sexual reproduction to primitive forms 

 of genesis, is explained by pointing out that such species 

 are peculiarly situated in obtaining abundant food with 

 little exertion. Among bees, ants, and termites alike, 

 the enormous fertility of the inactive and highly nourished 

 queen-mother are obviously also cases in point. 



The inverse variation of genesis with individuation has 

 now been demonstrated inductively as well as deductively, 

 and that for each element of the latter (growth, develop- 

 ment, or activity). Yet before discussing its application 

 to the problems of the multiplication of the human species, 

 two points remain, — a question has to be answered, and 

 a qualification made. The question, only partially p^ species of Onion 

 answered in course of the preceding argument, is. How is with asexual vege- 

 the ratio between individuation and genesis established in tatlve bulbils {b) 

 each special case ? and the answer is. By natural selec- 

 tion. This may determine, whether the quantity of 

 matter spared from individuation for genesis be divided into many small ova 

 or a few larger ones ; whether there shall be small broods at short intervals, 



amooi 



the flowers 



