1. Female Organs.
2290. The female parts are a floral capsule, consisting of an ovary or sac, stigma and ova. All higher development takes place, however, through separation of the complicated organs and processes.
2291. The three parts therefore of the gestative sac or matrix separate, each part becoming self-substantially perfected. The orifice elongates into a cervix or neck, which is gradually rendered more distinct from the matrix, and in its highest and self-substantial completion is called oviduct.
2292. The matrix elongates also at its cæcal extremity or fundus, as well as at its open end. The germinal bodies also become self-substantial, separate gradually from the fundus of the matrix, and are then independent ovaria.
2293. As in the highest animal formation they also assume the animal symmetry, while at first they were only single, or manifold, as in the plicated capsules of Star-fishes, and therefore remained stationary at the number two; so is the ovisac prolonged into two long cornua, or trumpet-like tubes, which at the commencement, indeed, still include the ova, as in Insects and Fishes, but are subsequently left entirely free.
2. Male Parts.
2294. The leaf-formation is elevated to the corolla or the male parts in the plant. They are, however, only the repetition of the plant upon a higher stage. Hence in the animal also the male parts will be upon a higher grade of position to the female.
2295. As the stamina surround the ovarian capsule in the plant, so do animal stamina stand around the orifice of the oviduct; as penes.
2296. In the lowest ovisacs the penes are circularly disposed around the orifice; as is exemplified by the tentacles of a Polyp; by degrees, however, they are resolved, for the sake of symmetry, into two, and then project upon the sides of the orifice, as in the Serpents and Lizards. In the higher animals the two penes coalesce into one.
2297. This penis situated at the orifice of the oviduct is the clitoris. The vagina is separated from the clitoris; but in the male organs they both combine or blend with each other, and the vagina becomes the seminal canal or that of the penis.