134 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



to me a specimen of Actinia crassicornis tliat might 

 originally have been two inches in diameter, and that 

 had somehow contrived to swallow a valve of Pecten 

 maximus of the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell 

 fixed within the stomach was so placed as to divide it 

 completely into two halves, so that the body stretched 

 tensely over had become thin and flattened like a pan- 

 cake. All communication between the inferior portion 

 of the stomach and the mouth was of course prevented ; 

 yet instead of emaciating and dying of an atrophy, the 

 animal had availed itself of what had undoubtedly been 

 a very untoward accident, to increase its enjoyments 

 and its chance of double fare. A new mouth furnished 

 with two rows of numerous tentacles was opened uj^on 

 what had been the base, and led to the under stomach 

 — the individual had become a sort of Siamese Twin, 

 but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions/' 

 Such is the blind voracity of this animal, that anything 

 and everything is carried straightway into its stomach 

 to be there tried, and rejected only on proved incom- 

 patibility. 



One day, while sorting and distributing to their re- 

 spective jars the animals captured during the morning's 

 hunt, I was called into the balcony by the agitated en- 

 treaties of lovely Sixteen, exclaiming, " Oh, do come ! 

 do come, and rescue this green Anemone from a great 

 nasty beetle." I went to the rescue, and found a large 

 beetle struggling in the clutches of a green Antliea. 

 " The beetle is the victim,'' I quietly told Sixteen ; who, 

 not having profound sympathies with beetles, was 



