Those kinds of animals which multiply by heterogenesis, present us with a parallel relation between the recurrence of gamogenesis and the recurrence of conditions checking rapid growth: at least, this is shown where experiments have thrown light on the connexion of cause and effect; namely, among the _Aphides_. These creatures, hatched from eggs in the spring, multiply by agamogenesis, which in this case is parthenogenesis, throughout the summer. When the weather becomes cold and plants no longer afford abundant sap, perfect males and females are produced; and from gamogenesis result fertilized ova. But beyond this evidence we have much more conclusive evidence. For it has been shown, both that the rapidity of the agamogenesis is proportionate to the warmth and nutrition, and that if the temperature and supply of food be artificially maintained, the agamogenesis continues through the winter. Nay more--it not only, under these conditions, continues through one winter, but it has been known to continue for four successive years: some forty or fifty sexless generations being thus produced. And those who have investigated the matter see no reason to doubt the indefinite continuance of this agamogenetic multiplication, so long as the external requirements are duly met. Evidence of another kind, complicated by special influences, is furnished by the heterogenesis of the _Daphnia_--a small crustacean commonly known as the Water-flea, which inhabits ponds and ditches. From the nature of its habitat this little creature is exposed to very variable conditions. Besides being frozen in winter, the small bodies of water in which it lives are often unduly heated by the summer Sun, or dried up by continued drought. The circumstances favourable to the _Daphnia's_ life and growth, being thus liable to interruptions which, in our climate, have a regular irregularity of recurrence; we may, in conformity with the hypothesis, expect to find both that the gamogenesis recurs along with declining physical prosperity and that its recurrence is very variable. I use the expression "declining physical prosperity" advisedly; since "declining nutrition," as measured by supply of food, does not cover all the conditions. This is shown by the experiments of Weismann (abstracted for me by Mr. Cunningham) who found that in various _Daphnideæ_ which bring forth resting eggs, sexual and asexual reproduction go on simultaneously, as well as separately, in the spring and summer: these variable results being adapted to variable conditions. For not only are these creatures liable to die from lack of food, from the winter's cold, and from the drying up of their ditches, &c., as well as from the over-heating of them, but during this period of over-heating they are liable to die from that deoxygenation of the water which heat causes. Manifestly the favourable and unfavourable conditions recurring in combinations that are rarely twice alike, cannot be met by any