REPRODUCTION
Reproduction and generation—Sexual and asexual reproduction—Superfluous growth—Monogony—Self-cleavage—Budding—Formation of spores—Amphigony—Ovum and sperm-cell—Hermaphrodite formation and separation of the sexes—Hermaphrodism and gonochorism of the cells—Monoclinism and diclinism—Monœcism and diœcism—Alternation of sex-division—Sexual glands of the histona—Hermaphroditic glands—Sexual ducts—Generative organs—Parthenogenesis—Pædogenesis—Metagenesis—Heterogenesis—Strophogenesis—Hypogenesis—Hybridism—Generation of hybrids and the species—Graduation of forms of reproduction.
While nutrition secures the maintenance of the organic individual, reproduction insures that of the organic species, or the group of definite forms which we distinguish from others by the name "species." All individuals are more or less restricted in the duration of their lives, and die off after the lapse of a certain time. The succession of individuals, connected by reproduction and belonging to a species, makes it possible for the specific form itself to last for ages. In the end, however, the species is temporary; it has no "eternal life." After existing for a certain period, it either dies or is converted by modification into other forms.
The rise of new individuals by reproduction from parent organisms is a natural phenomenon with definite time-restriction. It cannot have continued from eternity on our planet, as the earth itself is not eternal, and even long after its formation was incapable of supporting organic life on its surface. This only became possible when the surface of the glowing planet had sufficiently cooled for liquid water to settle on it. Until this stage carbon could not enter into those combinations with other elements (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur) which led to the formation of plasm. As I intend to deal with this process of archigony, or spontaneous generation, in a special chapter, I leave it for the present, and confine myself to the study of tocogony, or parental generation.
The various forms of tocogony, or the reproduction of living things, are generally divided into two large groups; on the one hand there is the simple form of asexual generation (monogony), and on the other the complex form of sexual generation (amphigony). In asexual generation the action of one individual only is needed, this providing a product of transgressive (redundant) growth which develops into a new organism. In sexual generation it is necessary for two different individuals to unite in order to produce a new being from themselves. This amphigony (or generatio digenea) is the sole form of reproduction in man and most of the higher animals. But in many of the lower animals and most of the plants we find also asexual multiplication, or monogony, by cleavage or budding. In the lowest organisms, the monera and many of the protists, fungi, etc., the latter is the only form of propagation.
Strictly speaking, monogony is a universal life-process; even the ordinary cell-cleavage, on which depends the growth of the histona, is a cellular monogony. Hence historical biology must say that monogony is the older and more primitive form of parental generation, and that amphigony was secondarily developed from it. It is important to emphasize this because, not only some of the older writers, but even some recent ones, regard sexual generation as a universal function of organisms, and declare that it dates from the very beginning of organic life.
The complex and frequently very intricate phenomena of sexual generation, as we find them in the higher organisms, become intelligible to us when we compare them with the simpler forms of asexual generation at the lowest stages of life. We then learn that they are by no means unintelligible and supernatural marvels, but natural physiological processes, which, like all others, may be traced to the action of simple physical forces. The form of energy which lies at the root of all tocogony is growth (crescentia). And as this phenomenon is also the cause, in the form of gravitation, of the formation of crystals and other inorganic individuals, we do away with another of the boundaries which people would establish between organic and inorganic nature. Reproduction is a kind of nutrition and growth of the organism beyond the individual standard, building up a part of it into a whole. This limit of individual size is determined for each species by two factors—the inner constitution of the plasm, which is inherited, and the dependence on the outer environment, which controls adaptation. When this limit has been passed, the transgressive growth takes the form of reproduction. Every species of crystal has also a definite limit of growth; when this is passed, new crystal-individuals are formed in the mother-water on the old individual, which grows no further.
Asexual or monogenetic tocogony (also called "vegetative multiplication") is always effected by a single organic individual, and so must be traced to its transgressive growth. When this affects the entire body as a total growth, the whole dividing into two or more equal parts, we call the monogenetic process division (or segmentation). But when the growth is partial, and affects only a part of the individual, or when this special part separates from the generating organism in the form of a bud (gemma), the process is called budding or gemmation (gemmatio). Hence the essential difference between the two forms of generation is that in division the parent disappears in its partial products (children); these are of the same age and form. But in budding the generating parent retains its individuality; it is larger and older than the young bud. This important difference between division and gemmation, which is often overlooked, holds good both for protists (unicellulars) and histona (multicellulars). The fact that in division the individual as such is destroyed is a sufficient refutation of Weismann's theory of the immortality of the unicellulars. (See above, and also the Riddle, chapter xi.)
Reproduction by division is by far the most common of all forms of propagation. It is the normal form of monogony, not only in many of the protists, but also in the tissue-cells which compose the tissues of the histona. It is, moreover, the sole method of propagation for most of the monera, both chromacea and bacteria, which are in consequence often comprised under the title of "cleavage-plants" (schizophyta). Self-cleavage is also found among the higher multicellular organisms—namely, the cnidaria (polyps, medusæ). It usually takes the form of division into two parts (dimidiatio or hemitomy), the body splitting into two equal halves. The plane of division is sometimes indefinite (fragmentary-cleavage), sometimes coincident with the long axis (length-cleavage), sometimes with the transverse axis, vertical to the long axis (transverse-cleavage), and less frequently with a diagonal axis (oblique-cleavage). When the segmentation of a cell proceeds so rapidly that the transverse-cleavage follows immediately on the length-cleavage, and the two are at length made to coincide, twofold division is changed into fourfold division. And when the process is repeated in quick succession, and the body falls at last into a number of small and equal pieces, we have manifold division (polytomy); as in the spore-formation of the sporozoa and rhizopoda, and in the embryonic sac of the phanerogams.
Asexual propagation by budding is chiefly distinguished from segmentation by the fact that the determining transgressive growth is only partial in the one and total in the other. The bud produced is, therefore, younger and smaller than the parent from which it issues; the latter may replace the lost part by regeneration and produce a number of buds simultaneously or successively without losing its individuality (whereas this is destroyed in division). Propagation by budding is rare among the protists, and more common among the histona—that is, with most of the tissue-plants and the lower, stock-forming, tissue-animals (cœlenteria and vermalia). Most stocks (cormi) are formed by a sprout or person shooting out buds which remain united to it. The layer and shoots of tissue-plants are detached buds. The two chief kinds of gemmation are terminal and lateral. Terminal budding takes place at the end of the long axis, and is not far removed from transverse division (for instance, the strobilation of the acraspedæ medusæ and the chain tape-worms). Lateral budding is much more common; it determines the branching of trees and generally of complex plants, and also of the tree-shaped stocks of sponges, cnidaria (polyps, corals), bryozoa, etc.