THE MARINE AQUARIUM. 81 
folds to a small extent. Thus it appears to approach the 
peculiar form of 4. bellis. The disk is nearly flat, or 
slightly hollowed, but rises in the centre into a stout 
cone, in the middle of which is the mouth, edged with 
crenated lips. The tentacles are arranged in seven rows, 
of which the innermost contains about twenty, the second 
twenty-four, the third forty-eight, the fourth ninety-six ; 
the other rows are too closely set, and too numerous to 
be distinguished. Probably the whole number of ten- 
tacles, in a full-grown specimen, may be considered as 
certainly not less than 500.” 
Actinia Dianthus.—This is the Plumose anemone of 
Mr. Gosse, and sometimes bears the very appropriate 
name of the Carnation anemone. It is the most superb 
of our native Actinias—a gorgeous creature, that in itself 
more than realizes our brightest imaginings of the hidden 
splendours of the ocean floor, and of the gems that 
bedeck the caves of Neptune. How will future poetry 
be affected by the revelations of the aquarium, and how 
far will the sober facts of scientific research influence the 
pictures and the incidents of romance? Even Keats’s 
glowing description of ‘ God Neptune’s palaces ” becomes 
tame in the presence of this splendid creature, which 
carries the fancy— 
*‘ far below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods, which wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean,” 
and peoples the dark slippery slopes with wondrous forms 
of life and beauty, as if the lost argosies and the perished 
G 
