So COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN 



If a wad of paper soaked in sea-water be placed on 

 the mouth of one of these Actinians it is refused, while 

 a piece of crab-meat, which to us does not differ in 

 taste from the wad of paper, is usually accepted with- 

 out delay. I tied one end of a short thread around a 



FIG. ii. CONTINUATION OF THE EXPERIMENT IN FIG. 10. 



paper wad and the other end around a piece of meat, 

 and threw both on the outstretched tentacles of a 

 starved Actinian. The tentacles that came in contact 

 with the meat (a, Fig. 10) reacted at once by bend- 

 ing in such a way as to bring the meat to the mouth, 

 while the tentacles that were in contact with the pa- 

 per did not react. I withdrew the thread and placed 

 it on the oral disc in such a way that the paper rested 

 on the tentacles where the meat had rested before, 

 and vice versa. The meat was then drawn into the 

 mouth and the string with it, but the paper remained 

 outside the oral opening (Fig. 11). During the next 

 twenty-four hours no change took place ; later on, the 

 thread was ejected without the meat. The latter was 



