ife, except in the very lowest forms, new life is
created by the coming together, in a very close and special way, of
the male and female elements. You have studied at school about the
plants and you probably have observed certain of the animals, so you
know something about what this means if you do not understand it
thoroughly.

But what you want to know most of all is just how it is with human
beings. You want to know just what this coming together is, how it is
done, how it starts the new life, the baby, and how the baby is born.
You want to understand the wonderful sex organs, that are different
in men and women, what each part is for and how it works.

If you feel very curious and excited and shy about it, don't let
yourself be a bit worried or ashamed. Your feelings are quite
natural, and most everybody else has felt just the same way at your
age. Remember that strong feelings are immensely valuable to us. All
we need to do is to steer them in the right direction and keep them
well balanced and proportioned.

Now in order to understand something of why this subject stirs us so,
we must notice in what ways we human beings are _different_ from the
plants and animals. About the lowest form of life is the amoeba. It
looks like a little lump of jelly, and it produces its young by
merely separating itself in two. One part drifts off from the other
part and each becomes a separate live being. There is no male and no
female and they didn't _know_ they were doing it. In the plants a
higher stage of development is reached: there is the male and the
female and they join together, not by coming to each other, or
because they _know_ they belong together, but quite unconsciously,
with the aid of the bees and other insects and the wind, the male
part is carried to the female part--they mix, and at once the seed of
a new plant begins to grow.

Then come to the animals. In all higher forms of animal life, the
male creature _comes_ to the female creature and himself places
within her body the germ which, when it meets the egg which is
waiting for it, immediately makes a new life begin to grow. But the
animals come together without _knowing why_. They do it from instinct
only, and they do it in what is called the mating season, which is
usually in the spring. The mating season happens once a year among
most of the higher animals, like birds and wild cattle, but to some
animals it comes several times a year like the rabbits, for