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e of our knowledge.
The prevalent ideas respecting the reproduction of animals are made up from the daily observation of those immediately about us in the barn-yard and the farm. But the phenomena here are comparatively simple, and easily traced. The moment we extend our observations beyond our cattle and fowls, and enter upon a wider field of investigation, we are met by the most startling facts. Not the least baffling of these are the disproportionate numbers of males and females in certain kinds of animals, their unequal development, as well as the extraordinary difference between the sexes among certain species, so that they seem as distinct from each other as if they belonged to separate groups of the Animal Kingdom. We have close at hand one of the most striking instances of disproportionate numbers in the household of the Bee, with its one fertile female charged with the perpetuation of the whole community, while her innumerable sterile sisterhood, amid a few hundred drones, work for its support in other ways. Another most interesting chapter connected with the maintenance of animals is found in the various ways and different degrees of care with which they provide for their progeny: some having fulfilled their whole duty toward their offspring when they have given them birth; others seeking hiding-places for the eggs they have laid, and watching with a certain care over their development; others feeding their young till they can provide for themselves, and building nests, or burrowing holes in the ground, or constructing earth mounds for their shelter.
But, whatever be the difference in the outward appearance or the habits of animals, one thing is common to them all without exception: at some period of their lives they produce eggs, which, being fertilized, give rise to beings of the same kind as the parent. This mode of generation is universal, and is based upon that harmonious antagonism between the sexes, that contrast between the male and the female element, that at once divides and unit