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Doctor, how are you today?

How's the doctor?

Do you prepare your lectures in advance, Doctor,

or do you just get up and say anything

that comes into your mind?

Well, I usually try to be in a specific--

I seriously have taken much more interest in nature, Doctor,

since you've began your lectures.

It's funny, but I don't know.

Yes, indeed.

What are you speaking on this afternoon, Doctor?

On the sex life of the polyp.

I think they're all ready, Dr. Benchley.

Thank you, Mrs. Pratt. I'll be right there.

Will you pardon me, please.

Certainly, Doctor, certainly.

Ladies, Dr. Benchley.

I wonder if you would take that, please.

- Thank you very much. - There you go, Doctor.

Now let's see, what have we uh--

oh, here.

You'll remember in our last lecture

we took up the subject of emotional crises

in sponge life.

And we saw how wonderfully nature takes care

of the thousand and one things which

a sponge must think of before it can reproduce other sponges.

We also saw, if you remember, that a positive sponge,

if mated with a negative sponge, with reproduce positive sponges

and vise versa.

We also saw that this is known as Lipscomb's Law,

so-called after Professor Lipscomb,

who discovered it quite by accident one day

in the bathtub.

Now this afternoon we will take up certain phases

of the emotional and physical reactions of the polyp

as expressed in its sex life, if you can call it a sex life.

The polyp, as you know, is that tiny organism

which grows under the sea and which looks something like a--

well, you've see the snail.

It isn't exactly like a snail, it is smaller than a snail.

Well, a small dog isn't it either.

Well, I've brought some of the little creatures

here, which we've been using in the laboratory.

And they may serve to show what the Irishman

called the nature of the beast.

Well, I don't seem to have got it after all.

Well, never mind.

I have some pictures here which I'm going to show

you later in the afternoon.

Now the only way in which your polyp resembles other animals

at all is that at certain periods during its growth

it does display a sentimental interest

in polyps of the opposite sex.

Now this presents a very complicated

situation, as the polyp has no definite sex itself.

That is it's neither one thing or another.

By that I mean, the same polyp may be either a boy or a girl

according to what or how it happens to feel

like being.

As Dr.-- as Dr. Hasenholz says in his valuable book----

And this, mark you, to a man who has given his whole life

to a study of the subject.

Now this tendency to change sex at any moment, while it does

save the polyp a great deal of time and expense,

never the less makes difficult any definite analysis

of its sex behavior.

However, Dr. Rasmussen and I made

some interesting experiments along this line.

And it is the result of these experiments

that I wish to bring before you this afternoon.

I think I'll lower the screen now, Mrs. Pratt.

Well, that's more like it.

In order to study the polyp at close range, which

is about the only way you can study a polyp,

after all, we took one of the tiny creatures home

with us to live.

It was, at the time, a girl polyp,

so we called her Mary, after Ethel Barrymore.

She was at first naturally shy, but soon grew

accustomed to our mannish ways and became more like a child

of our own then like a polyp.

Although, of course, she looked more like a polyp than

like a child of our own.

It was in this way that we were able to tell the difference.

Uh, lights out, please, Mr. Cassidy.

That's fine. Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.

Now here is a picture of Mary taken when she had

been with us only a few weeks.

It really isn't very good of us, taken, as it was,

when the light was poor and magnified about 100 times.

But it may serve to give you some idea

of her personality and charm.

What fun it was to watch her grow

and to feel that we were having a share, however small, in her

develop.

Along about May we decided that it was

time to make our experiment.

Now having the female, it was naturally necessary

for us to provide a male.

And to this end, we went to Bermuda for a few weeks,

Bermuda being a great hangout for polyps.

Now here we were fortunate enough

to locate a colony of the little fellows who seemed to be

in good physical condition.

Here is the picture that we were able to get

of a group of the little fellows out for a good time.

You may be sure that the lazy rogues have

their fun, as who does not.

It was from this aggregation that we decided

to select a husband for Mary.

And after a careful examination under the microscope,

we decided to choose the one which you will see the third

from the left in this picture.

No, now he's the fourth.

Now he's the fifth, the fifth from the left.

This little chap up here in the corner tried to get away,

but the camera was too quick for him.

Now having the necessary male for our experiment,

we placed the two polyps in an open space

behind the Princess Hotel and proceeded to await development.

Here is picture taken just before the gong sounded.

The one on the right is the male and on the left, the female,

unless I'm mistaken.

Yes, I am mistaken.

The one on the right is the male, female,

and on the left, the male.

What a mistake.

One unusual thing about the polyp's courtship

is its restraint.

A polyp is only a polyp, after all,

and has his little weaknesses like the rest of us.

I, for one, would not have it otherwise.

But even so, the entire courtship

is carried on with an open space between the male

and female of perhaps 50 paces, a polyp measure.

Which, in a way, makes it difficult for the male

to be anything much more than just a pal.

The male has a rather unusual way of attracting the attention

of the opposite sex, female.

It was Dr. Rasmussen who discovered that

during the courting season--

the courting season begin son the 10th of March

and extends on through the following February.

Leaving about 10 days for general overhauling

and repairs.

During the courting season--

--the male gives forth a strange, phosphorescent glow,

something like a diamond scarf pin.

Now this glow is supposed to be very attractive to the female.

And it is by dazzling her with his appearance of elegance

that the male is able to bring the lady around

to his point of view.

In order to test the powers of observation of the male

during these maneuvers, we played a rather mean trick

on the little fellow.

We took away the original female for whom he was so frantically

flashing his gleamer, and put in her place another,

but less attractive female.

This seemed to make no difference

at all to the male who continued to flash on just the same.

We then took away the second female and put in her place

a small button, something the color of a polyp,

following this with a crumb of cornbread.

Now so far as we were able to detect,

this change in personnel made no difference at all

to the male who continued to exert himself,

still under the impression that he was making a conquest,

even with the crumb of cornbread.

Now this little ruse of ours, while it proved

that the male polyp is not particularly clear

as to just what it is he's after,

rather put an end to our experiment as a whole.

While the male, evidently disgusted at his inability

to excite the button or the crumb of cornbread,

suddenly gave up the whole thing as a bad job

and turned into a female.

Now this left us practically where

we were in the first place with no male at all.

So Dr. Rasmussen and I, after a finding

a good home in Bermuda for what were now our two girl polyps,

returned to America, still marveling at nature's

wonderful accomplishment sin the realm of sex.

But rather inclined to complete our experiments

with some animal which takes its sex

life a little more seriously.