30 Dr. Reid on the Development of the Medusse. 
this experiment by placing those detached in separate vessels, 
and almost always successfully, when care was taken to disturb 
them as little as possible for three or four days, or longer. A 
considerable number of larva3 are adhering to the surface of the 
vessels in which the stones are kept *. 
I made several experiments upon the reparative powers of the 
larv£e. In several the upper half of the body was cut off, and 
after three or four days its lower or cut end had closed in, and 
by the sixth day it had attached itself to the surface of the ves- 
sel, and shortly assumed all the appearances of an entire larva, 
sending out stolons and forming buds. Fig. 12 is a representa- 
tion of the upper half of a larva eight days after it had been cut 
off. New tentacula, and a new mouth also, after several days 
presented themselves on the upper or cut end of the lower half. 
Several were divided longitudinally through their entire length, 
and when means were not taken to keep the cut edges apart 
they soon adhered again, and no traces of their division remained. 
In one divided longitudinally the two portions were kept apart, 
and in each the cut edges approximated and adhered, and two 
separate animals were thus produced from one. 
The larvae are voracious, and readily seize and swallow uni- 
valve or bivalve molluscans, or a crustacean, as large or even 
larger than their own bodies before they are stretched out, and 
after retaining them in the stomach, generally for about twenty- 
four hours in summer and nearly twice as long in winter, they 
reject them through the mouth. They also not unfrequently 
swallow one of their neighbours, and its sojourn in the stomach 
for some time terminates in its digestion and destruction. When 
they seize a univalve molluscan too large to be swallowed, they 
retain it firmly embraced in their tentacula, and insert their elon- 
gated mouth into the interior of the shell ; and in like manner 
they keep dead articulate animals, or molluscans without shells, 
too large to be swallowed, in their tentacula for more than a day, 
and probably extract nourishment from them by acting on their 
textures by their extensible lips. 
The larvae of the first colony, obtained in September 1845, did 
not split transversely into young Medusje in the spring of 1846, as 
I expected them to do, but continued to produce stolons and buds 
abundantly. A great number of them had then attained a large 
size, and many of them presented on their outer surface transverse 
rugae, and four pretty deep equidistant vertical grooves, as repre- 
sented in fig. 13, but none of them presented the appearances now 
* According to Savs, “si on detaclie violemment ces polypes, il a 
qu’iin petit nombre qui pent se fixer de nouveau, et alors ils n’adherent pas 
si fortement qu’a rordiiiaire ; la plupart restent libres an fond du verre.” — 
Opus cit. p. 339. 
