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148 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
organ withers. The whole flower drops off, when its
function has been performed. Some plants produce but
one set of generative organs, and then the whole plant
perishes. These are the annuals. Others go on pro
ducing year after year. These are the perennials.
There are many of the lower varieties of animals
which perform but a single act of generation, and then
die. The higher animals continue the process through
many years. As a general rule, the lower the animal in
the scale, the more prolific. A fish produces millions of
eggs; the higher mammalia seldom have more than one
at a birth. Some animals breed in litters every month ;
others require two or three years to produce and suckle
a single offspring.
In the females of most animals, there occurs a period
of love, in which are they ready to receive and solicit
the embraces of the male. This is called the period
of heat, or the rutting season. It is that in which the
ova are ripened, and cast off from the ovaries, and
when the sexual congress is demanded for their impreg
nation. This period, which in animals is more or less
frequent, according to their periods of gestation, cor
responds to the periodic menstrual- evacuation in the
human female.
The males of animals differ with respect to their
readiness for the performance of their part in the sexual
function. In some, the feeling seems not to exist in
the intervals, and the testicles are shrunken and inactive ;
but when the rutting season of the female arrives, as it
usually does in the spring, these organs enlarge, secrete
with vigor, and the animals seem filled with a fury of
desire. The stag, usually gentle, is at this time fierce