these efforts, given time, may well show that hydra are particularly 

 favorable material for the investigation of cellular and intercellular 

 problems. History at least supports this view, because it was in 

 hydroid material that asexual reproduction and regeneration were 

 first discovered over two hundred years ago. 



'7 cut off the heads of the one that had seven, and after a few 

 days I saw in it a prodigy scarcehj inferior to the fahidous Hydre of 

 Lernaea. It acquired seven new heads ... .But here is something 

 more than the legend dared to invent: the seven heads that I cut off 

 from this Hydre, after being fed, became perfect animals. . . ."^ 



W. Farnsworth Loomis, M.D. Howard M. Lenhoff, Ph.D. 



Greenwich, Connecticut Miami, Florida 



September 21. 1961 



^ Abraham Trembley, 1744. Memoircs, pour servir « Vhistoire d'un genre de 

 polypes d'eau douce, a bras en forme de comes. Leide (Verbeek), p. 246. Quoted 

 in Abraham Trembley of Geneva, John R. Baker, Arnold & Co., London, 1952, p. 34. 

 (A complete translation, to be published, S. G. Lenhoff and H. M. Lenhoff, University 

 of Miami Press. ) 



