THE OPELET. 
163 
This is the species, doubtless, which attracted the notice 
of the poet Southey, when, in the retirement of om* wild 
western shores, he was meditating his oriental poems, and 
which he has interwoven into their beautiful imagery. 
“ Meantime, with fuller reach and stronger swell. 
Wave after wave advanced ; 
Each following billow lifted the last foam 
That trembled on the sand mth rainbow-hues : 
The living flower, that, rooted to the rock, 
Late from the thinner element 
Shrank down within its purple stem to sleep. 
Now feels the water, and, again 
Awakening, blossoms out 
All its gi’een anther-necks.” * 
Whether in its native freedom, fringing the edges of 
some shallow basin in the red sandstone of the Devon 
coast, or waving its silky tentacles “ like streamers wide 
outflowing,” now exposed, now concealed among the black 
fronds of some undulating Fucus to which it is clinging ; 
or throwing them into fitful snake-like contortions as it 
hangs from the rock-work of a well-kept aquarium, — the 
Anthea, especially the emerald variety, is an exquisitely 
beautiful object. Its unwonted liveliness also makes it 
more than usually interesting in the last-named condition ; 
for not only are its tentacles continually in motion, but the 
animal itself is very restless, frequently changing its place, 
and that with so much activity that the process can be 
readily watched by the eye. 
For the following graphic note I am indebted to Mr. 
llobert Patterson, of Belfast. I also have often marked the 
beauty of Anthea under similar conditions, but never in 
such numbers as he describes : — 
“ I had on one occasion the pleasure of seeing the Anthea 
under circumstances that I shall not readily forget. Out- 
* Thalaba, xiL 3. 
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