SEA ANEMONES. 195 



and brown, and white ; while the fringe of moving 

 tentacles is varied with rings of white and dusky upon 

 a pellucid gray ground.. Surely, for variety and rich- 

 ness of colouring, minute as it is, this little creature 

 deserves the title which has been assigned it, of the 

 Ornate Anemone. 



The vivifying element has revealed another of the 

 same tribe, which we had failed to detect before. Of 

 similar form and dimensions, it is arrayed simplex 

 munditiis tentacles, disk and column in virgin white, 

 the purity of the undriven snow, of the snow that has 

 faUen silently and impalpably throughout a calm and 

 breathless night. 



These are Anemones; things which we are ac- 

 customed to put at the bottom of our zoological scale ; 

 things which we call zoophytes, animal-plants, ani- 

 mal-flowers ; and of which our fathers thought, as 

 many of their children still think, that the vegetable 

 element predominated over the animal. Sluggish, 

 flabby, helpless creatures they seem ; ready to become 

 the unresisting prey of the first fish that espies them 

 and essays to taste their daintiness. Yet let him be- 

 ware ! He will rue the hour when his wretched lips 

 touched the fatal morsel, should he be rash enough 

 or young enough to make the venture; but indeed 

 instinct is generally a teacher potent enough to in- 

 duce him to practise the laissez faire policy in this 

 case. 



Here is this Snowy Anemone expanded to the full 

 in all its unsuspecting bridery. We give it a poke 



