No. 396.] HYDROMEDUSA, GONIONEMUS VERTENS. 947 
to see if the proximal end of the bell, with its contained or- 
gans, vtz. the stomach, manubrium, and the proximal ends of 
the radial canals, could develop a new circle of tentacles, sense- 
organs, etc. Hargitt has described one case in which there 
was some evidence of the development of new tentacles, but 
the piece died without further development. 
In this experiment I cut off the proximal bell portion, some- 
times by cutting around with a pair of scissors, sometimes by 
laying the jellyfish on its side and cutting off the margin with 
a knife. > 
Some of the proximal pieces were small, some large, some 
had been cut.off by a nearly circular line, others by two or 
three oblique lines. In most cases the bell portion contracted, 
after a day or two, around the base of the manubrium, but no 
further development took place. In other 
cases the cut edges met and fused to form 
a sphere entirely closed. These kinds of 
pieces disintegrated after several days. 
Forty pieces in all behaved in one or the 
other way. It will be noticed that in 
nearly all these cases the part removed 
had been cut off less than halfway down 
the side of the bell, or near that level. It occurred to me 
that if the margin of the bell were cut off not so high up 
as before, but farther down, better results might be obtained, 
both because larger proximal pieces would result, and also, 
the cut edge being nearer to the old tentacles, the new ones 
were more likely to develop. In thirteen individuals the 
margin was removed as just described. Two of these showed, 
five days after the operation, small opaque projections around 
the margin of the cut edge. In one of these (Fig. 12) there 
were twenty of these small knob-like bodies. Although these 
grew somewhat more distinct and slightly larger during the 
next day or two, they failed to develop further. These two 
cases are similar to the one described by Hargitt. He at- 
tributed the failure of the knob-like projections to develop 
into tentacles to the unprecedented hot weather that prevailed 
at the time. But although I kept one of the two pieces for 
Fic. 12. 
