IT IS well established that the resting tension (stress)-sarcomere length relationships of a variety of intact preparations of cardiac muscle are different from those of skeletal muscle preparations. In contrast to skeletal muscle in which resting tension is negligible at sarcomere lengths below about 2.3 jim (Gordon et al., 1966;Lannergren and Noth, 1973; Moss and Halpem, 1977), mammalian cardiac preparations have relatively high resting tensions at these sarcomere lengths (Spiro and Sonnenblick, 1964), and the resting tension increases markedly at sarcomere lengths beyond 2.3 /im. In nonmammalian cardiac preparations, variable results have been obtained. Starling (1918) found in intact tortoise ventricle that the resting tension remained relatively small over a wide range (approximately 6-fold) of diastolic volumes, which included the rising phase and the relatively broad range (approximately 2-fold) of the active tension-diastolic volume relationship. In contrast, both Winegrad (1974) and Matsubara and Maruyama (1977) found that the resting tension increased significantly over the sarcomere length range of 2.0-2.6 /xm in small bundles of frog atrial tissue. Nassar et al. (1974) found