Sept. ], 1SC9.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



20c 



1. Actinia dianthus. 



Eig. 164. Sea Anemones. 



2. Cereus qemmaceus. 3. Actinia bicolor. 4. Sagartia viduata. 5. Cereus papillosus. 

 7. Actinia equina. 8. Sagartia rosea. 9. Sagartia coccinea. 



6. Actinia picta. 



the mutilated mother continues to live as if nothing 

 had happened. In short, it Las long been known 

 that the sea anemones may be cut limb from limb, 

 mutilated, divided, and subdivided. One part of 

 the body cut off is quickly replaced. Cut off the 

 tentacles of an actinia, and they are replaced in a 

 short time, and the experiment may be repeated in- 

 definitely. The experiments made by M. Trembley, 

 of Geneva, upon the fresh-water polypi were 

 repeated by the Abbe Dicquemare in the sea 

 anemones. He mutilated and tormented them in a 

 hundred ways. The parts cut off continued to live, 

 and the mutilated creature had the power of repro- 

 ducing the parts of which it had been deprived. To 

 those who accused the Abbe of cruelty in thus 

 torturing the poor creatures, he replied that, so far 

 from being a cause of suffering to them, " he had 

 increased their term of life, and renewed their 

 youth." 



The Acthdadce vary in their habitat from pools 

 near low-water mark to eighteen or twenty fathoms 



water, whence they have been dredged up. " They 

 adhere," says Dr. Johnston, "to rocks, shells, and 

 other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous 

 secretion from their enlarged base, but they can 

 leave their hold and remove to another station 

 whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding along 

 with a slow and almost imperceptible movement 

 (half an inch in five minutes), as is their usual 

 method, or by reversing the body and using the 

 tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur 

 asserts, and as I have once witnessed ; or, lastly, 

 inflating the body with water, so as to render it 

 more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are 

 driven to a distance by the random motion of the 

 waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, 

 and similar shelled mollusca, and probably on all 

 animals brought within their reach whose strength 

 or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the 

 grasp of their numerous tentacula; for as these 

 organs can be inflected in any direction, and greatly 

 lengthened, they are capable of being applied to 



