80 MARCH. 



the animal found it easier to tear its own tissues apart 

 than to overcome it. The fragments so left soon con- 

 tract become smooth, and spherical or oval in outline ; 

 and in the course of a week or fortnight each may be 

 seen furnished with a margin of tentacles and a disk ; 

 transformed, in fact, into perfect though minute Ane- 

 mones. Occasionally a separated piece, more irregularly 

 jagged than usual, will, in contracting, constringe itself, 

 and form two smaller fragments, united by an isthmus, 

 which goes on attenuating until a fine thread-like line 

 only is stretched from one to the other ; this at length 

 yields, the substance of the broken thread is rapidly 

 absorbed into the respective pieces, which soon become 

 two young Anemones. 



All the kinds which we have seen in this locality 

 belong to one great family, the Sagartiadce, a group 

 which includes nearly one-third of the seventy species 

 of Anemones and Corals which we have on the British 

 coast ; and certainly the most beautiful and the most 

 known, taking them one with another. They are 

 distinguished by a remarkable peculiarity ; the skin of 

 the body is pierced with minute holes, capable of being 

 opened and closed at will, out of which can be forced 

 curious slender threads, which ordinarily lie coiled up 

 in great profusion in the interior of the animal. These 

 threads are almost entirely composed of those extra- 



