Mark Jerome Walters

Mark Jerome Walters was an editor of the Reader's Digest and international traveler writing about the natural sciences.

Courtship is the bringing together of individuals. Conception is the bringing together of gametes. The Dance of Life, 1988.

Like a house filled with different clocks, organisms abound with devices that tell them when to eat, sleep, and reproduce. Ibid.

The existence of all life seems to be patterned with binding regularity. The Buddha likened it to an endlessly turning wheel. As another wise man phrased it, "One generation passes and another comes. The sun rises and sets and hurries around again. All rivers run to the sea . . . the water returns to the rivers, and flows to the sea again . . . Nothing is new under the sun."

Or beneath the moon. Ibid.

In 1675, when Jesuit priest Anthansius Kircher set out to calculate how many creatures accompanied Noah on the Ark, he determined that God's original complement of land animals consisted of 310 species. Ibid.

In a century in which the moon has been explored and Mars mapped, many thousands of plants and animals in our midst have yet to be seen or given a name. Ibid.

. . . speciation is but the beginning of diversity, for within every species are myriad individuals. Like snowflakes, no two sexually reproducing organisms are the same. Ibid.

Sperms are plentiful, eggs a rare commodity. Ibid.

The female must be prudent in her investments. Ibid.

Unlike the male, who invests a little energy in many offspring, the female pours great energy into a few offspring. Ibid.

Spring is also the season when life's astounding diversity comes clearly into view- a richness that owes much of its existence to sex. And to which the world owes much of its woe. Ibid.