476 NATURAL HISTORY OF HAWAII. 



Sea-Anemonies. 



The food and general habits and life history of the sea-anemonies may be 

 studied with profit by placing the living examples of any of the common 

 shore forms, with the bit of rock to which they are usually attached, into an 

 aquarium. When disturbed they contract into an almost unrecognizable mass, 

 but when unmolested they expand into beautiful aster-shaped, fiower-like, bril- 

 liantly-colored animals, so that a collection of living species is a veritable 

 sea flower-garden. That they are not flowers, however, may be shown by at- 

 taching a small piece of meat to a thread and dropping it into the circle of 

 petal-like tentacles. Almost instantly the long tentacles close over the food 

 and shift it to the mouth, where the .juices are extracted and the flesh digested. 



As a rule, sea-anemonies settle where food is most liable to be carried to 

 them by currents of water. Sometimes they attach themselves to other ani- 

 mals, as crabs, and in this way are carried about from place to place. That 

 there are a large number of species about Hawaii is apparent to the most 

 casual observer, but as far as the writer knows, they have never been studied 

 and classified. 



Turning now to the stony corals,-' so important as reef builders, we find 

 that though they are much nuu-e minute a.s individuals, they are more 

 liable to develop into large colonies. Thus a single cabinet specimen of coral 

 often represents, as a life work, the combined involuntary secretion of myi-iads 

 of these patient and persistent animals. Interesting and beautiful as the 

 bleached skeletons of the stone corals are, the living animals in their haliitat on 

 the growing reef are infinitely more fascinating to study. In the different 

 species the expanded animals cover the skeleton with their soft bodies, giving 

 to them a variety of colors as varied and as delicate as those in the rainbow. 



The Growing Coral Reef. 



Those persons Avho for the first time see a growing coral reef through a 

 glass-bottomed boat, or, failing that, through a water-box with a glass bottom, 

 are invariably lost in admiration. Though they are privileged to repeat the 

 experience again and again, they never tire of viewing the peaceful, brilliant 

 scene beneath the wave. There, with the living and dead coral as a back- 

 ground, are mingled in wild and ever-changing confusion a multitude of 

 nature's curious plants and singular animals. All are garbed in the most 

 wondei"ful, striking and varied colors imaginable, and as they swim in and out 

 among the corals or tranquilly wave to and fro with the rise and fall of every 

 wave, they form a veritable vision of delight that time and distance cannot dim. 



To have visited Hawaii without visiting some of these tropical .siibmarine 

 gardens is to have missed a golden opportunity, but to live in Hawaii, often 

 within the sound of the surf that breaks over her fringing coral reefs, and not 

 to have first-hand knowledge of their wonders, is to be remiss indeed. 



