COR RKSPONDENCE 



To the Editor of the American Naturalist: 



Sir : At the May meeting, this year, of the Philadelphia Acad- 

 emy of Natural Sciences, Miss Sarah P. Monks read a note on the 

 "Regeneration of the Body of a Starfish." The brevity of the com- 



I quote from the report : " In studying regeneration in Phataria 

 {Linckia) fascia/is she had cut arms at different distances from the 

 disk, and a number of the single rays produced new bodies. The 

 free ray made a new body and the rest of the starfish produced a 

 new ray .... In the photograph of a six-rayed Phataria, the cut ray 

 attached to the body shows a small ray sprouting, while the free ray- 

 shows four new rays. This was cut July, 1902, and the photograph 

 taken February, 1903.'' 



Miss Monks is to be congratulated on having at last produced 

 the experimental evidence demanded by the skepticism of recent 

 writers on the soundness of Haeckel's conclusion 1 reached long ago 

 that "jeder abgeloste Arm [of certain starfishes] reproducirt die 

 ganu Scheibe nebst den iibrigen Armen." 



I have been permitted by Miss Monks to examine all her speci- 

 mens bearing upon this subject, and have followed her experiments 

 with much interest and deem it but justice to her to say that in 

 reality she has the data for a considerably fuller presentation of the 

 question than would appear from the meager report which has 

 elicited these comments. It is to be sincerely hoped that a fuller, 

 well illustrated account of her observations may be published before 

 long. 



William E. Ritter. 



University of California, 

 Aug. 22, 1903. 



