constant tendency to assume, speaking generally, the character of the
parent. As I said just now, if you take a slip of a plant, and tend it
with care, it will eventually grow up and develop into a plant like
that from which it had sprung; and this tendency is so strong that, as
gardeners know, this mode of multiplying by means of cuttings is the
only secure mode of propagating very many varieties of plants; the
peculiarity of the primitive stock seems to be better preserved if you
propagate it by means of a slip than if you resort to the sexual mode.

Again, in experiments upon the lower animals, such as the polype, to
which I have referred, it is most extraordinary that, although cut up
into various pieces, each particular piece will grow up into the form
of the primitive stock; the head, if separated, will reproduce the body
and the tail; and if you cut off the tail, you will find that that will
reproduce the body and all the rest of the members, without in any way
deviating from the plan of the organism from which these portions have
been detached. And so far does this go, that some experimentalists
have carefully examined the lower orders of animals,--among them the
Abbe Spallanzani, who made a number of experiments upon snails and
salamanders,--and have found that they might mutilate them to an
incredible extent; that you might cut off the jaw or the greater part of
the head, or the leg or the tail, and repeat the experiment several
times, perhaps, cutting off the same member again and again; and yet
each of those types would be reproduced according to the primitive
type: nature making no mistake, never putting on a fresh kind of leg, or
head, or tail, but always tending to repeat and to return to the
primitive type.

It is the same in sexual reproduction: it is a matter of perfectly
common experience, that the tendency on the part of the offspring