• A difficulty in studying the pathogenesis of essential hypertension is that spontaneous hypertension is not frequent in experimental animals. Most experimenters have used animals in which hypertension has been induced, usually by the production of renal ischemia. As essential hypertension in man is inheritable, an attempt was made to develop a spontaneous hypertension by selective breeding from rats with overaverage blood pressures. Eventually a strain of Wistar rats with overaverage blood pressures was obtained by Smirk and Hall 1 ; about 25 per cent of buck rats had tail blood pressures exceeding 140 mm. Hg and a few were above 160 mm. Hg. Since this article was published, the colony has improved and over 50 per cent of buck rats have systolic blood pressures exceeding 150 mm. Hg.We are unaware of any long series of experiments on animals with spontaneous hypertension, although Alexander et al.2 found the response to the cold pressor test was increased in the families of rabbits with spontaneous hypertension.Divergent conclusions have been published concerning the comparative responsiveness of hypertensives and normotensives, both human and experimental. The responses to several pressor drugs are stated to be larger in hypertensive than in normotensive rats by Sturtevant. 3 Olsen et al. 4 found an enhanced response to epinephrine and norepinephrine in renal hypertensive rats, whereas the responses to tyramine and phenethylamine were similar in hypertensives and normotensives. While the average responses to epinephrine and angiotensin of DCA-treated hypertensive