SEA-ANEMONES. 361 
out of rnins; wherever a plant can find room there Flora 
appears with her lovely gifts. 
But the ocean also has its large radiate anemcnes, whose 
lustrous petals, still more wonderful than those of the land, for 
they are endowed with animal life, form the chief ornament of 
the crystal tide-pools, or of the sheltered basins of our rock- 
bound shores. 
More than twenty species of these marine flowers, many of 
them displaying a gorgeous wreath of richly coloured tentacles, 
are denizens of the British waters; but the finest and largest 
are found along the margin of the equatorial ocean, where they 
occasionally measure a foot in diameter. Their tints are as 
various as the arrangement of their prehensile crown; fiery red 
and apple-green, yellow and white as driven snow. Sometimes 
the tentacles form a gorgon’s head of long thick worms, clothed 
in satin and velvet, and sometimes a thicket of delicate fila- 
ments. 
Nothing seems more inoffensive than a sea-anemone ex- 
panding its disc in the tranquil waters, but woe to the wandering 
annelide, to the shrimp, or whelk, or nimble entomostracon, that 
comes within reach of its urticating tentacles, for, plunged into 
a fatal lethargy, it is soon hurried to the gaping mouth of its 
voracious enemy, ever ready to engulf it in a living tomb. The 
morsel thus swallowed is retained in the stomach for ten or 
twelve hours, when the undigested remains are regurgitated, 
enveloped in a glairy fluid, not unlike the white of an egg, 
The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion 
to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. Thus Dr. 
Johnstone mentions a specimen of Actinia crassicornis, that 
might have been originally two inches in diameter, and that 
had somehow contrived to swallow a scallop-valve of the size 
of an ordinary saucer. The shell fixed within the stomach was 
so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the 
body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like 
a pancake. AJl communication between the inferior portion of 
the stomach and the mouth was of course prevented ; yet instead 
of emaciating and dying of an atrophy, the animal had availed 
itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident 
to increase its enjoyments and chances of double fare. A new 
mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was 
