THE PLUMOSE ANEMONE. 
lo 
Muller has called dianthics the most beautiful of all the 
Anemones, — Actiniarum pulcJierrima and his verdict 
is surely correct, so far as it refers to European species. 
When we see a full-grown specimen of some of the more 
delicately coloured varieties, — the pale orange, the flesh- 
coloured, or the clear white, — rising erect from its broad 
base like the stem of a massive tree, crowned with its 
expansive disk of myriad tentacles, we cannot but consider 
it a most noble, as well as a most lovely object. It is only 
in expansion that it is beautiful. The button will some- 
times shrink down to an abject flatness, scarcely more 
than an eighth of an inch in height in the centre, the cir- 
cumference spread out on every side to cover an irregularly 
outlined area of some five or six inches in diameter, but 
no thicker than a card. In this condition it is almost a 
repulsive object, but, perhaps in a quarter of an hour, you 
look at it again, and the change seems magical. The 
animal has risen, and swollen, and distended its body 
with clear water, till the tissues appear plump, and almost 
transparent ; it now forms a noble massive column, some 
five inches high, and three thick, from which the delicate 
frilled disk expands, and arches over on every side, like 
the foliated crown of a palm tree. Then again, on some 
cause of alarm, real or supposed, it will suddenly draw 
in its beautiful array of frills, contract around them its 
parapet, and assume a distended bladder-like figure, with 
the clustering tentacles just protruding from the slightly 
open aperture. 
It is under the veil of night that the Anemones in 
general expand most readily and fully. While the glare 
of day is upon them, they are often chary of displaying 
their blossomed beauties ; but an hour of darkness will 
often suffice to overcome the reluctance of the coyest. 
The species before us is not particularly shy ; it may often 
