THE POISON OF THE MURRY 



the benefits we secure from it or the inconveniences 

 we suffer from it. We are apt to classify the creatures 

 which normally surround us as useful or harmful, or 

 neither one nor the other. Among those we call 

 harmful, those which are venomous attract a good 

 deal of our attention, and we try to find means to 

 protect ourselves accordingly. We make of them a 

 class apart, in which we assume that the gland which 

 produces the poison, and the instrument which serves 

 to introduce it, make up a structure, the two com- 

 ponents of which are narrowly related. We consider, 

 further, judging by the perfection which this mechanism 

 sometimes displays, that it represents in its own way 

 a condition clearly devised for the needs of attack or 

 of active defence, and we are apt to see in this specializa- 

 tion the reason, the only reason in fact, for such an 

 organization. But this is not at all the case. There is 

 only agreement of a general function with the presence 

 of an apparatus which is able to make use of it in a 

 particular way. The tragic power of the poisonous 

 creature is only a part in a greater power, a more 

 complex and extended power. 



The world of waters shows this better than the 

 world in which we ourselves live. Poisonous animals 

 are numerous in that world, and fishes are not the 

 only ones. In the case of many, if not all, the power 

 is never really used. Though, on land, its frequent 

 use seems to indicate the idea of some functional 

 relation, nothing of the sort in normal life is to be 

 observed in the other. There the effective capacity is 

 rarer than the possibility. 



The rocky structure of the tank, of which the murry 

 occupy the holes and hollows, is adorned, here and 

 there, by sea-anemones, their columnar bodies attached 

 by the base, and crowned with a coronet of supple 

 and contractile tentacles. They, too, are poisonous 

 animals, and their name " sea-nettles " expresses the 

 fact very well. If I take one, pull it away from its 

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