Page 461.
Under a theoretical point of view it is some gain to science to know that numberless structures in hermaphrodite plants, and probably in hermaphrodite animals, are special adaptations for securing an occasional cross between two individuals; and that the advantages from such a cross depend altogether on the beings which are united, or their progenitors, having had their sexual elements somewhat differentiated, so that the embryo is benefited in the same manner as is a mature plant or animal by a slight change in its conditions of life, although in a much higher degree.
Another and more important result may be deduced from my observations. Eggs and seeds are highly serviceable as a means of dissemination, but we now know that fertile eggs can be produced without the aid of the male. There are also many other methods by which organisms can be propagated asexually. Why then have the two sexes been developed, and why do males exist which can not themselves produce offspring? The answer lies, as I can hardly doubt, in the great good which is derived from the fusion of two somewhat differentiated individuals; and with the exception of the lowest organisms this is possible only by means of the sexual elements, these consisting of cells separated from the body, containing the germs of every part, and capable of being fused completely together.
It has been shown in the present volume that the offspring from the union of two distinct individuals, especially if their progenitors have been subjected to very different conditions, have an immense advantage in height, weight, constitutional vigor and fertility over the self-fertilized offspring from one of the same parents. And this fact is amply sufficient to account for the development of the sexual elements, that is, for the genesis of the two sexes.
It is a different question why the two sexes are sometimes combined in the same individual, and are sometimes separated. As with many of the lowest plants and animals the conjugation of two individuals, which are either quite similar or in some degree different is a common phenomenon, it seems probable, as remarked in the last chapter, that the sexes were primordially separate. The individual which receives the contents of the other, may be called the female; and the other, which is often smaller and more locomotive, may be called the male; though these sexual names ought hardly to be applied as long as the whole contents of the two forms are blended into one. The object gained by the two sexes becoming united in the same hermaphrodite form probably is to allow of occasional or frequent self-fertilization, so as to insure the propagation of the species, more especially in the case of organisms affixed for life to the same spot. There does not seem to be any great difficulty in understanding how an organism, formed by the conjugation of two individuals which represented the two incipient sexes, might have given rise by budding first to a monœcious and then to an hermaphrodite form; and in the case of animals even without budding to an hermaphrodite form, for the bilateral structure of animals perhaps indicates that they were aboriginally formed by the fusion of two individuals.
WHY THE SEXES HAVE BEEN RESEPARATED.
Page 463.
It is a more difficult problem why some plants, and apparently all the higher animals, after becoming hermaphrodites, have since had their sexes reseparated. This separation has been attributed by some naturalists to the advantages which follow from a division of physiological labor. The principle is intelligible when the same organ has to perform at the same time diverse functions; but it is not obvious why the male and female glands, when placed in different parts of the same compound or simple individual, should not perform their functions equally well as when placed in two distinct individuals. In some instances the sexes may have been reseparated for the sake of preventing too frequent self-fertilization; but this explanation does not seem probable, as the same end might have been gained by other and simpler means, for instance, dichogamy. It may be that the production of the male and female reproductive elements and the maturation of the ovules was too great a strain and expenditure of vital force for a single individual to withstand, if endowed with a highly complex organization; and that at the same time there was no need for all the individuals to produce young, and consequently that no injury, on the contrary, good, resulted from half of them, or the males, failing to produce offspring.
COMPARATIVE FERTILITY OF MALE AND FEMALE PLANTS.
The Different Forms of Flowers,
page 290.