LE POL YPES, 79 
If a polype be divided into seven or eight pieces, at the end of 
two days each fragment will have become a perfect creature. 
Reesel assures us that he has seen the arms cut into tiny pieces, 
each piece becoming, in due time, a perfect hydra. Thus one 
individual can produce a whole family by the sacrifice of one of its 
arms ; neither does it suffer by the mutilation, for it at once repro- 
duces the member it lost. This wonderful property of reproduction 
does not reside in the arm alone, but the whole body may be cut 
into pieces, and each section will soon form a new individual, in 
A POLYPE WITH BUDS. 
(A living genealogical tree.) 
all respects like the creature divided. Another strange peculiarity 
this polype exhibits is, that it can be turned inside out like the 
finger of a glove, and yet continue to live as though nothing 
had happened! The exterior skin, which did respire, now digests ; 
and the interior surface, which but lately carried on the digestion, 
now performs the breathing functions. If there be any polypules 
on the surface of a hydra thus unceremoniously treated, they will 
continue to increase if they have reached a sufficiently advanced 
stage of development; and although they find themselves im- 
prisoned in an internal cavity when they separate from their 
parent, yet they re-issue by the mouth. Those, on the other 
hand, which are not sufficiently advanced, ¢wrn themselves inside out, 
and so appear on the outside, where they complete their develop- 
