WATER'S-EDGE IN HAITI 



the next two anemones the long stalks were 

 green. 



Although they move and eat and are animals 

 like ourselves, anemones, as personalities, pall 

 after a time, and my interest was about to shift to 

 other organisms when, in the lee of a small man- 

 grove growing far down the sand, I saw a large 

 individual with a brood of young alongside. There 

 were eleven, and all clustered in a squarish space 

 of about three inches. Their discs were tiny but 

 the slender tentacles were bravely expanded to 

 their widest extent. 



Sea anemones are delightfully diversified in the 

 matter of reproduction. The eggs may be ferti- 

 lized in the water or be retained until they become 

 good sized embryos. Some actinian mothers have 

 special brood pouches like aquatic kangaroos. Or 

 adventitious infants may suddenly develop like 

 buds on the stalk of the parent; or the anemone 

 herself may have a sudden longing for a double 

 life, and slowly and gently split in twain, either 

 horizontally or across. 



It would almost seem as if the small family I had 

 discovered had dropped off as buds, and instantly 

 sunk their tiny, living shafts to bed-rock, or in this 

 case bed-shell, for all reached down a full inch to 

 a long buried wreck of a conch. To this they 

 clung with a persistency resisting the movements 

 both of sand and water, — which to them were, on 

 the one hand avalanches of great boulders and on 

 the other, the terrific pounding of huge breakers. 



57 



