270 METAMOEPHOSES OF MAN 



takes place the relationship is fundamentally the same. 

 Now this is precisely what occurs in certain other 

 cases, — among the Aphides, for example ; and a glance 

 at Professor Owen's sketches will explain the matter 

 as fully as we can in words. From the egg laid in 

 autumn, there is developed in the following spring 

 a neuter Aphis, which by a process of gemmation pro- 

 duces others like itself, this process being continued 

 for several generations. If all these descendants of a 

 single germ were attached to one another, we should 

 have a regular polypidom. In being isolated at birth, 

 their relationship is not altered. This is what Steen- 

 strup suspected, and what Professor Owen demon- 

 strated in a very lucid manner. The neuter Aphides 

 correspond to the food-seeking polyps of the Coryne, 

 and to the sterile branches of the rose-tree ; the male 

 and female Aphides represent the reproductive polyps 

 of the polypidom, and the flowers of the rose-tree, 

 and from our point of view may also be styled 

 animal flowers. 



Among the general facts bearing upon the class of 

 speculations we are now engaged in, is one upon 

 which I have often dwelt heretofore, and which I may 

 here recall. 



There is but one mode of sexual reproduction, 

 whilst there are several forms of agamic generation 

 which are found equally in the two kingdoms. In 

 certain plants, we find, besides the true bud — the bulb 

 — a genuine bud, like that we have referred to, but 

 which becomes detached from the parent, and is 

 developed by itself, as though it had been a seed. 

 We ourselves have found this deciduous bud in Syn- 

 hydra, an animal closely akin to Coryne. The lower 



