SEA ANEMONES AND CORALS 45 
and farther north. Large specimens are about three inches wide 
and four high. When expanded the body is cylindrical with a 
dense fringe of tapering tentacles surrounding the slit-like mouth. 
The tentacles are covered with minute hair-shaped organs, or cilia, 
which wave outward so as to create a current from the base toward 
the tip of the tentacle, and they are also armed with thread cells 
that sting the small creatures upon which the anemone feeds. 
These sea anemones develop from eggs, but they also slowly 
divide; an originally single anemone sometimes splitting longitu- 
dinally until two are produced. In addition Mrs. M. L. Hammatt dis- 
covered that little anemones are often budded out from the base of 
large ones. 
The body of the anemone contains powerful muscles, and when 
the animal is disturbed these contract so that the tentacles are rolled 
inward and hidden away, while the body becomes a mere dome-like 

Fig. 21; WHITE-ARMED ANEMONE. From Life. 
Specimens in the New York Aquarium. 
mass. Long, white, thread-like filaments are als® extruded through 
pores in the sides of the body. These filaments ( F’7g. 2U), are called 
acontiia, and bear great numbers of stinging thread-cells. 
The White-Armed Anemone, (Sagartia leucolena, ig. 21), is 
common off the Long Island coast, and extends from the Carolinas 
to Cape Cod. It is slender, the body being somewhat more than 
two inches long, while the tentacles are about one inch in length. 
