We are naturally led to inquire why the male, in so many and such distinct classes, has become more eager than the female, so that he searches for her, and plays the more active part in courtship. It would be no advantage, and some loss of power, if each sex searched for the other; but why should the male almost always be the seeker? The ovules of plants after fertilization have to be nourished for a time; hence the pollen is necessarily brought to the female organs--being placed on the stigma by means of insects or the wind, or by the spontaneous movements of the stamens; and, in the _Algæ_, etc., by the locomotive power of the antherozoöids. With lowly-organized aquatic animals, permanently affixed to the same spot, and having their sexes separate, the male element is invariably brought to the female; and of this we can see the reason, for even if the ova were detached before fertilization, and did not require subsequent nourishment or protection, there would yet be greater difficulty in transporting them than the male element, because, being larger than the latter, they are produced in far smaller numbers. So that many of the lower animals are, in this respect, analogous with plants. The males of affixed and aquatic animals, having been led to emit their fertilizing element in this way, it is natural that any of their descendants, which rose in the scale and became locomotive, should retain the same habit; and they would approach the female as closely as possible, in order not to risk the loss of the fertilizing element in a long passage of it through the water. With some few of the lower animals, the females alone are fixed, and the males of these must be the seekers. But it is difficult to understand why the males of species, of which the progenitors were primordially free, should invariably have acquired the habit of approaching the females, instead of being approached by them. But, in all cases, in order that the males should seek efficiently, it would be necessary that they should be endowed with strong passions; and the acquirement of such passions would naturally follow from the more eager leaving a larger number of offspring than the less eager. TRANSMISSION OF SEXUAL CHARACTERISTICS. [Page 232.]