ring forward further examples. It is the
difficulty of treating so wide a subject within narrow limits that so
many things that are of interest have to be hurried over and left out.
But there is one delightful case that I cannot refrain from
mentioning. The facts are given in a letter from Darwin to Sir Charles
Lyell, dated September 14, 1849. It is quoted by Professor Lester
Ward. This instance of the sexual relationship among the cirripedes
illustrates very vividly the early superiority of the female.

The letter runs thus--

"The other day I got a curious case of a unisexual, instead of
hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the common
cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had two
little pockets, in each of which she kept a little husband; I do
not know of any other case in which the female invariably has
two husbands. I have still one other fact, common to several
species, namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they have
small additional, or shall I call them, complemental males, one
specimen, itself hermaphrodite, had no less than seven of these
complemental males attached to it. Truly the schemes and wonders
of Nature are illimitable,"[23]

Here, indeed, is a knock-down blow to the theory of the natural
superiority of the male. These cases we have examined are certainly
extreme, the difference between the sexes is, as we shall see, less
marked in many early types. But the existence of these helpless little
husbands serves to show the true origin of the male. How often he
lived parasitically on the female, his work to aid her in the
reproductive process, useful to secure greater variation than could be
had by the single-celled process. In other words, the male is of use
to the life-scheme in assisting the female to produce progressively
fitter forms. She, indeed, created him, his sole function being her
impregnation.

Corroborative evidence appears in the contrast which persists in all
the higher forms between the relatively large female-cell or germ and
the microscopical male-cell or sperm, as also in the absorption of the
male cellule by the female cellule. In the sexual cells there is no
character in which differentiation goes so far as that of size.[24]
The female cell is always much larger than the male; where the former
is swollen with the reserve food, the spermatozoa may be less than a
millionth of its volume. In the human speci