"
"Is she not dead, then?" inquired Sophia, with astonishment,
"It appears that her wounds were not mortal," quietly replied her
mother.
"Besides," observed Jack, "there are human frames so constituted that
they can bear an immense amount of cutting and slashing. So in the
case of animals; there, for instance, is the fresh-water polypus--if
you cut this creature lengthwise straight through the middle, a right
side will grow on the one half and a left side on the other, so that
there will be two polypi instead of one. The same thing occurs if you
cut one through the middle crosswise, a head grows on the one half and
a tail on the other, so that you have two entire polypi either way."
"And you may add," observed Ernest, "since so interesting a subject is
on the _tapis_, that if two of these polypi happen to quarrel over
their prey, the largest generally swallows the smallest, in order to
get it out of the way; and the latter, with the exception of being a
little cramped for space, is not in the slightest degree injured by
the operation."
"And does that state of matters continue any length of time?"
"The polypus that is inside the other may probably get tired of
confinement, in which case it makes its exit by the same route it
entered; but, if too lazy to do that, it makes a hole in the body of
its antagonist and gets out that way.
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