are used in China, Japan, the Malay Archipelago, 

 and the Indian Ocean for making bracelets that are 

 worn to ward oflf rheumatism, drowning, and other 

 perils. Black corals occur also in the Mediterranean, 

 the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, but having no 

 decorative value they are no longer worked by Euro- 

 peans as they were in ancient times. 



THE TV BE ANEMONES 



Like long, slender, muscular burrowing anemones 

 are the tube anemones or cerianthids, which live 

 buried in sand almost to the feeding disk. The slender 

 tentacles arise in two distinct sets — an inner smaller 

 set encircling the mouth, and a marginal set, each 

 composed of one or more circlets. The body is sur- 

 rounded by a tube formed of a hardened slimy se- 

 cretion and lined with cast-off stinging capsules or 

 imbedded with sand grains and other foreign parti- 

 cles. The feeding disk cannot be retracted into the 

 column as in most anemones, but when disturbed it 

 disappears down the protecting tube. The Medi- 

 terranean Cerianthiis is well known to visitors to the 

 Naples Aquarium, where fine specimens have been 



on display at least since the 1880's. In 1882 a small 

 green individual was placed in a tank when it was 

 only 1 Vz inches long and IVi inches thick. In 1924, 

 forty-two years later, it had increased ten times in 

 size, and the crown of gracefully extended drooping 

 tentacles had a diameter of 10 inches. Species of 

 Ceriantlms are also common in the English Channel 

 (Plate 32) and along the American Atlantic coast. 

 A brown species up to 6 inches long occurs from 

 Cape Cod to Florida in shallow water. A larger 

 northern species, with a rough tube up to 2 feet long, 

 housing an anemone that stretches 1 8 inches, occurs 

 in deep water from southern New England north- 

 ward at least to the Bay of Fundy. On the Ameri- 

 can Pacific coast Cericmthiis estuaii is well known 

 from sandy mud flats (alongside the burrowing and 

 true anemone Harenactis) in Mission Bay. The outer 

 set of transparent, delicately banded tentacles is 

 spread out on the sand in a circle 4 or 5 inches 

 across. A bigger species, which does not live inter- 

 tidally north of southern California, may have a 

 tube 6 feet long. Most cerianthids are tropical or sub- 

 tropical. 



114] 



