188 ZOOPHYTES. 



but now the upper portion was the more vigorous. Five shoots were 

 formed there, bearing eight perfect hydrse on January 17, or 34 days after- 

 wards ; and from the lower extremity issued three shoots, on one of which 

 was a single hydra at that date. The section lay horizontally ; each set 

 of shoots rose perpendicularly. This was an extraordinary regeneration 

 from so small a fragment. 



Among the other reproducing sections, one bad regenerated five 

 shoots upwards in the natural direction. — Fig. 6. These earlier reproduc- 

 tions are of a long clavate shape, whether the shoot be generated from the 

 higher or lower extremity. 



On the seventh day following the section, a new shoot or branch was 

 evidently cleaving from fig. 6, last referred to. Next day, the eighth after 

 section, a hydra, with a mouth like a cup, environed by 27 tentacula, was 

 displayed from a denticle on a shoot of the same portion, fig. 7, a ; and on 

 the ninth day, a second hydra, d, was forking off a, or rather from the site 

 it had occupied, being then decayed. — Fig. 8. Other two hydrse now ap- 

 peared from different shoots in the vicinity — whence the progress of repro- 

 duction from the same section, figs. 6, 7, 8, is shown. 



On the tenth day, the extremity of the shoots, a, b, c, fig. 8, had sub- 

 divided, the hydra, b, still subsisting. — Fig. 9. 



The section lay in a horizontal position originally ; and at first its new- 

 shoots issued almost horizontally likewise. However, by gradually tending 

 upwards, they became quite erect in twelve days. — Fig. 10. In sixteen, 

 six hydrse were still displayed ; but in twenty-two, only two shoots, the 

 taller with three hydrse, remained in display ; in twenty-six, no more than 

 a single shoot subsisted ; and in three or four longer, the pith was totally 

 consumed by the progress of decay. 



The number of shoots generated from any section seemed to me in- 

 definite, but I may have been misled by ignorance of the component parts, 

 because the shoots might correspond to the tubuli. Ten issued from the 

 stump of a specimen cut low, but only one from the stalk cut high. Each 

 tube of the stem may be therefore endowed with a separate and indepen- 

 dent reproductive property, while all resolving into one in the higher parts, 

 it may concentrate there. 



