324 WILSON GEE 



sufficient nutritive strength to cause the reversal of ciliary action 

 and the consequent ingestion of the mucus material. Certainly 

 the conditions under which an anemone is fed in the laboratory 

 are most unusual, and it may be that there are substances in 

 the oyster, crab, or other meat employed in the feeding experi- 

 ments, which are more or less injurious in nature to the ane- 

 mone, and that these substances produce the copious mucus 

 secretion. There does seem to exist some relation between the 

 reversal of the beat of cilia and the secretion of mucus, since 

 substances producing the one, usually produce the other. 



DISCUSSION OF RESULTS 



Removal of the mucus. — One possible explanation of the phe- 

 nomena described in the preceding experiments might be thought 

 to be that the mucus forms a coating over the tentacles and 

 that this acts as a mask to lower the responsiveness by covering 

 the sensory cells. That this is not the case can be quite easily 

 demonstrated by removing all of the mucus with a camel's hair 

 brush from several tentacles and then stimulating these. They 

 will be found to be as irresponsive as the tentacles about them 

 on which the mucus still remains. Also, even upon very strong 

 contact stimulation immediately after expansion, the tentacles 

 remain perfectly flaccid, in many cases, a condition which would 

 not hold true were the insensitiveness due solely to the masking 

 effect of the coat of mucus. 



Muscular fatigue. — That the loss of responsiveness on the 

 part of the tentacles after much food has been taken in is not 

 due to fatigue resulting from the activity of taking in food on 

 the part of the muscular fibrils has been shown by Allabach in 

 the following experiment. An anemone was fed on one side 

 of the disk till the tentacles of that region refused to accept 

 food. Meat given to the opposite side was not taken at all, 

 though these had not been active in food taking. A clearer 

 indication of the fact that muscular fatigue alone as the result 

 of food taking plays but a negligible part in the decrease of 

 response is shown by the experiment described in an earlier 

 portion of this paper. Anemones made to contract as the result 

 of contact stimulation with a sterile glass rod for as many times 

 as they normally accept food showed no decrease from the 

 average of times other anemones had been found normally to 



