HYDRA. 185 



" Wliat kind or degree of pain/^ Baker remarks^ " this 

 creature feels upon being divided, it is impossible to con- 

 ceive or know ; but we commonly find that the parts contract 

 themselves immediately after the operation, and a sort of 

 tremor or quivering motion may frequently be observed in 

 them by the microscope. And yet its eating so soon after 

 it has been cut asunder would almost induce one to imagine, 

 either that the pain is not very great, or that it is over in- 

 stantly, or that the pain of hunger is greater." 



Were those who make these experiments to be accused of 

 cruelty, they might, perhaps, say that the seeming cruelty 

 is greatly overbalanced by the results ; for though they do 

 inflict pain on a single animal by cutting it into fifty pieces, 

 as M. Trembley has at times done, tliis pain, at the longest, 

 is only of a few days' continuance, and after that you have 

 fifty times the original amount of happiness, for instead of 

 one, you have fifty living creatures as full of enjoyment as 

 had been the single polype from whose mangled body this 

 great troop has sprung. 



The first experiment that Baker records is the cutting ofF 

 the head of a polype close under the tentacula. This he 

 did on the 25th of March. He made observations on both 

 the parts every day. There was daily progress in both, and 



