36 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 
“To test this power of penetration still farther, as well as 
to try whether it is brought into exercise on the contact of a 
foreign body with the living Anemone, I instituted the follow- 
ing experiment. With a razor I took shavings of the cuticle 
from the callous part of my own foot. One of these shavings 
I presented to the tentacles of a fully expanded Tealia crassi- 
cornis ( Urticina crassicornis of Europe and America). After 
contact, and momentary adhesion, I withdrew the cuticle, and 
examined it under a power of 600 diameters. I found, as 1 
had expected, enide standing up endwise, the wires in every 
ease shot into the substance. They were not numerous—in a 
space of .01 inch square, I counted about a dozen. * * * 
“These examples prove that the slightest contact with the 
proper organs of the Anemone is sufficient to provoke the dis- 
charge of the cnid@; and that even the densest condition of 
the human skin offers no impediment to the penetration of the 
ecthorea. 
“ As to the injection of a poison, it is indubitable that pain, 
and in some cases death, ensues even to vertebrate animals 
from momentary contact with the capsuliferous organs of the 
Zodphyta. * * * I have elsewhere recorded an instance 
in which a little fish, swimming about in health and vigor, 
died in a few minutes with great agony through the momen- 
tary contact of its lip with one of the emitted acontia of Sa- 
gartia parasitica. It is worthy of observation, that, in this 
case, the fish carried away a portion of the acontium sticking 
to its lip; the force with which it adhered being so great, that 
the integrity of the tissues yielded first. The acontium severed, — 
rather than let go its hold. 
‘* Now, in the experiments which I have detailed above, we 
have seen that this adhesion is effected by the actual impene 
tration of the foreign body by a multitude of the ecthorea, 
