Lernæan Hydra, a monster with nine heads, one of them immortal, that infested a swamp near Lernæ, and which Hercules was required to slay as one of his twelve labours, only as often as he cut off one head two grew on, but with the assistance of Iolcus his servant he singed off the eight mortal ones, cut down the ninth, and buried it under a huge rock.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Lepsius, Karl Richard * Lerwick