66 BY THE DEEP SEA. 



tempted into repeating or plagiarising the gushy nonsense that 

 has been so lavishly poured out by many writers, in which the 

 Anemones have been commended to popular notice because 

 of their wonderful resemblances to flowers. Even the older 

 naturalists were not free from blame in this matter, for they 

 named the animals zoophytes (animal plants) and anthozoa 

 (flower-animals), names that have stuck, and of which we 

 cannot be rid. The term " anemone " (wind-flower) itself is 

 utterly absurd when applied to the Actinia. Beyond the 

 brilliant colours and the petal-like rays of certain species, 

 there is no parallel between these creatures and flowers, and 

 the institution of such poetical similes in too many cases only 

 serves to hide the true nature of these interesting forms of 

 life. 



On a rocky coast at low water we shall find the Beadlet 

 thickly studding the rocks that stand up high above the sand 

 or pebbles. Those that are on the perpendicular face of the 

 rock are smooth hemispheres of dark-crimson, bottle-green, 

 olive, or ruddy-brown, with a more or less vivid thin margin of 

 blue where the base is attached to the rock. Lower down, a 

 little above the water, we shall find them more elongated and 

 hanging downwards, some with the rays or tentacles partly 

 extended, but the whole animal looking somewhat flaccid. In 

 the water, however, whether it be of the rock-pool or the 

 actual sea, the tentacles are so widely spread that, looking 

 down upon them, we can see but little of the fleshy column or 

 even of its base. These tentacles are never very long in this 

 species, but they are fairly numerous, there being 192 in an 

 adult specimen, arranged in six series. Their general ten- 

 dency is to arch over towards the column, and so hide the 

 row of blue eye-like spherules that peep out between the 

 column and the tentacles. Within the radius of the tentacles 

 is an almost flat, smooth expansion of flesh, called the disk, in 

 the centre of which, on a conical eminence, is the mouth. 

 The mouth is the opening of a bottomless sack which serves 



