CHAPTER V.
REPRODUCTION—PART I.
In teaching children or young persons the process of reproduction one of the cleanest, most natural and beautiful methods of doing this is to tell them the process which goes on in the various forms of life in the flower, fish, frog, bird and to lead up to the highest and most complex of all living creatures—man.
They watch the butterfly and bee carry a load of pollen from the father buttercup to fertilize the seeds within the mother flower. They watch Mr. and Mrs. Frog awaken from their long winter nap, and stirred by the life-giving impulse within them, start for the breeding pond. They watch Father Thrush win his mate and patiently stand guard over her during the tedious hatching days. They are told and see that the flowers depend upon outside forces to bring the pollen from the male to the female to fertilize the seeds before the seeds could grow. They are taught that the mother fish lay her eggs in the water first and that the father fish, unlike the flowers, being able to move about, carries the pollen (which is now a fluid) to the seeds himself. They are told that Father Frog, being a higher creature, fertilized the eggs before they reached the water, and Father Thrush being still higher in the scale fertilized the eggs before they left the mother's body. That the higher the species was, the greater the care required to preserve that species.
In this way the mind is prepared for the information which should follow.
The girl at puberty should be taught this process and something of what goes on within the womb after the ovum has been fertilized. She should know that all organic life is the result of a simple cell; that man is a community of cells, banded together and depending upon each cell to carry on its work, for the benefit of the whole.
Let us first, then, get an idea of a cell and what it is and what it does. A cell is a tiny portion of living matter having in its center a spot or nucleus which represents the point of germination; it is separated from its sister cells by partitions of cell membrane.
A simple cell is formed by the fusion of two germ cells when they meet to exchange nuclear elements. After this fusion they are able to proceed with fission, which means splitting into parts, and it is the subsequent cellular growth of the fused germ-cell that constitutes reproduction.
There are two kinds of reproductive cells, the ova in the female and the spermatozoa in the male.
When the sexual act takes place, there is deposited into the vagina a secretion known as semen. According to Sutkowsky, each deposit or ejaculation contains 50,000,000 of spermatozoa.