MANNERS OF ANTHEA. 17 



green with rosy tips, are sufficiently numerous. They 

 are content to be covered with a few inches of water, 

 their bases resting on the rough bottom, in which 

 they seem to be imbedded to a slight depth ; but this 

 is probably the effect of the animals' choosing a hollow 

 of suitable dimensions ; for I do not believe that their 

 muscular base has any faculty of eroding the rock. 

 When half-a-dozen or more are seen inhabiting a small 

 pool, their appearance is curious, and not a little 

 beautiful. The great mass of long and slender tenta- 

 cles are not arranged, like those of other Actinicc, in 

 circles of divergent rays, but contorted and inter- 

 twined in all directions, like the dishevelled snake- 

 locks of Medusa's head. In the beautiful lines 

 already cited from Southey, I think he had this 

 species in view when he speaks of the "green anther 

 necks" ; but the '^purple stem" of the sleeping one 

 was most likelv the common Smooth Anemone. 

 Perhaps he thought that they were the same species 

 in different conditions. 



In a large vase of sea-water Antheas actions are as 

 peculiar as its appearance. It is fond of climbing up 

 the sides of the glass, a feat which it accomplishes 

 Avith a considerable measure of (comparative) activity. 

 It glides up by the broad fleshy base, pretty much in 

 the same manner as a gasteropod does by its expand, 

 ed foot ; and yet the process is not exactly the same. 

 The power which Anthea has of inflating portions of 

 its body, swelling them out in large tumid lobes 

 separated by deep sulci from the rest of the circum- 

 ference, assists it in crawling. We will suppose the 

 Anthea resting on the bottom of the vessel, when it 



