HYDRA DISCOVERED 281 
body and its horns had increased in bigness, and four 
hours later still I saw that it had forsaken its mother. 
When I discovered the young animalcule aforesaid, I 
also perceived that, on the other side of the body of the 
first animal, there was situated ' a little round knob, which 
J did see getting bigger, from time to time, for the next 
few hours (as shown in Fig. 4, between G and I); and at 
last it appeared as a little pointed structure, which had 
so far grown in bigness in the course of thirteen or four- 
teen hours, that you could make out two little horns 
upon it. After the lapse of another four-and-twenty 
hours, this last-mentioned animalcule had four horns, 
whereof one was small, a second a bit bigger, and the 
other two much bigger; and these last the little animal 
stuck out at full length, or pulled in short. And another 
three hours later this little animal was gone off from his 
mother. * 
I tried to trace this reproduction further, and for this 
purpose took the duckweed away from the animalcule, so 
that I could follow it better; but next day that animal- 
cule not only lay dead, but its horns and a piece of its 
hind end were all gone, having rotted off, as you might 
call it. 
Another little animal, that had brought forth two young 
ones, not only had her body laden with many other 
1 
aan de andere zijde .. . een rond knobbeltje zad MS. I take this 
last word to be a verb (zat=sat). Chamberlayne, however, evidently 
took it for a substantive (zaad = seed), and consequently translates ‘a round 
little knob of seed”. But I cannot reconcile this interpretation with the 
construction of the sentence as a whole, and at this period L. always spelt 
zaad (=seed, a frequent word with him) with aa—never “ zad”. ‘A knob 
of seed”’ is also an unintelligible expression. Dr A. Schierbeek (in. litt.) 
agrees with my interpretation. 
2 All the foregoing observations on the budding of Hydra are very 
remarkable. No animal which reproduces asexually by budding was known 
at that date; and the sensation caused by the similar observations of 
Trembley, and others, nearly half a century later, is in strange contrast 
with the apparent indifference which greeted L.’s discovery. 
