210 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



natural history. Divide a fresh- water polyp into five or six parts, and 

 at the end of a few days all the separate parts will be organized, deve- 

 loped, and form so many new beings, resembling the primitive indi- 

 vidual. Let us add, that the polyp which should thus have lost five- 

 sixths of its body, the mutilated father of all this generation, remains 

 complete in itself; in the interval, it has recuperated itself and re- 

 covered all its primitive substance. 



After this, if a Hydra vulgaris wishes to procure for itself the 

 blessings of a family, it has only one thing to do : cut off an arm ; if 

 it desire two descendants, let it cut the arm in two parts ; if three, let 

 it divide itself into three ; and so on ad infinitum. " Divide one of 

 the animals," says Trembley, "and each section will soon form a new 

 individual in all respects like the creature divided." " A whole host 

 of polyps hewn into pieces," says Fredol, "will be far from being 

 annihilated." " On the contrary," we may say, in our turn, " its youth 

 will be renewed, and multiplied in proportion to the number of pieces 

 into which it has been divided." " The same polyp," says Trembley, 

 " may be successively inverted, cut into sections, and turned back again, 

 without being seriously injured." 



If a green Hydra is cut into two pieces, and the stomach is cut off 

 in the operation, the voracious creature will, nevertheless, continue to 

 eat the prey which presents itself. It gorges itself with the food, 

 without troubling itself with the loss which it has sustained ; but the 

 food no longer nourishes it, for it merely enters by one opening, passes 

 through the intestinal canal, and escapes by the other. It realizes 

 Harleville's pleasantry of M. de Crac's horse, in the piece of that name, 

 which eats unceasingly, but never gets any fatter. 



All these instances of mutilation, resulting in an increase of life, are 

 very strange. The naturalists to whom they were first revealed could 

 scarcely believe their own eyes. Reaumur, who repeated many of 

 Trembley 's experiments, writes as follows : " I confess that when I 

 saw for the first time two polyps forming by little and little from that 

 which I had cut in two, I could scarcely believe my eyes ; and it is a 

 fact that, after hundreds of experiments, I never couid quite reconcile 

 myself to the sight." 



In short, we know nothing analogous to it in the animal kingdom. 

 About the same period Charles Bennet writes : " We can only judge 

 of things by comparison, and have taken our ideas of animal life from 



