i96 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
them into a basket of wet sea-weed; when you get 
home turn them into a dish full of water and leave 
them for the night, and go to look at them to-morrow. 
What a change! The dull lumps of jelly have taken 
root and flowered during the night, and your dish is 
filled from side to side with a bouquet of chrysanthe- 
mums; each has expanded into a hundred-petalled 
flower, crimson, pink, purple, or orange; touch one, 
and it shrinks together like a sensitive plant, dis- 
playing at the root of the petals a ring of brilliant 
turquoise beads. That is the commonest of all the 
Actinia (Mesembryanthemum); you may have him 
when and where you will: but if you will search 
those rocks somewhat closer, you will find even more 
gorgeous species than him. See in that pool some 
dozen large ones, in full bloom, and quite six inches 
across, some of them. If their cousins whom we 
found just now were like Chrysanthemums, these are 
like quilled Dahlas. Their arms are stouter and 
shorter in proportion than those of the last species, 
but their colour is equally brilliant. One is a bril- 
liant blood-red ; another a delicate sea-blue striped 
: A 
ee i lat 
