OF SEA-ANEMONES. 7 



and stroll homewards, feeling that the collective 

 knowledge we have obtained from our half-dozen 

 acquaintances is by no means an equivalent to the 

 trouble we have incurred in obtaining it. 



Now, perhaps, as the reader has expended a 

 portion of his patrimony in the purchase of this 

 volume, he will begin to grumble when he gets so 

 far as page the seventh, and finds that the writer has 

 hitherto ingeniously contrived to shirk the point 

 which he promised at starting to elucidate. So let 

 me open a few books of reference, and turn up for 

 my ill-used friend the best description that I am 

 able to discover. 



"A sea-anemone," I find it said, "is a radiate 

 animal — an actiniform polyj). Body single, fleshy, 

 conoid, fixed by its base. Locomotive. Mouth in 

 centre of upper disc, surrounded by one or more 

 series of conical, tubular, retractile tentacula." 



There — what do you think of that ? Supposing 

 you had never seen a sea-anemone, do you believe 

 you could go down instantly to the rocks, and bring 

 back a specimen or two without any difficult}^ ? 



Well, as I am sure I could not in such a case, 

 I shall proceed to say a few words about animals, 

 and explain (in English) why an anemone is called 

 a radiate, a polyp, and an actinoid — and then I think 

 it will be extremely evident ivhat he is. 



Now the reader may think that this is a very long 

 process, but it is positively a necessary one ; and I 



