146 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



suggests, impatient of all discussion, and su23remely 

 indifferent to all considerations save those of a moral 

 order. Unhappily my story is not ampler in detail, 

 nor finer in complexity of movement, than the story of 

 Canning's "Knife-grinder" — who had none to tell. 

 The Anemone is lovely, but even its warmest admirers 

 must confess it is a little monotonous in its manifesta- 

 tions. Existence suffices it. It expands its coronal 

 of tentacles, eats when chance favours it, produces 

 offspring, which it sends forth, leaving them, borne by 

 the many currents of the sea, to settle where they 

 list, without any fear of i3arental supervision, and thus 

 lives to a good old age, if no one nudges the elbow of 

 Atropos, and causes that grim lady suddenly to cut 

 the thread.'"' Nor is it easy to nudge the old lady's 

 elbow. The Anemone has more lives than a cat. We 

 have already seen (j3. 21) how it will resist slashing 

 and amputation ; and, except zoologists and the fierce 

 little Eolis, I know no animal which, finding its flavour 

 agreeable, cares to make a meal of it. Yet, curiously 

 enough, this Anemone, whose vitality is so remarkable, 

 who may be hacked and hewed without appearing to 

 suffer from it, dies almost immediately if removed 

 from salt water to fresh. It will live for days out of 

 water, but in fresh water it will not live at all. There 



* The age to which an Actinia may live has not yet been definitely 

 ascertained ; but Professor Fleming at Edinburgh has [Oct. 1857] one 

 in his possession, which was taken at North Berwick in 1828 ; so that, 

 at the very least, it must be twenty-eight years old, that period having 

 been passed in confinement. 



