CHAPTER XI 

 CORAL-MAKERS AND JELLY-FISH 



A VERY beautiful kind of sea-anemone (common at 

 Felixstowe) is the Daisy or Sagartia troglodytes, 

 (Fig. 6, a), which has a very long body attached to a 

 rock or stone far below the sandy floor of the pool, on 

 the level of which it expands its thin, long, ray-like 

 tentacles, coloured dark brown and white, and sometimes 

 orange-yellow. As soon as you touch it it disappears 

 into the sand, and is very difficult to dig out. The 

 most beautifully coloured of all sea-anemones are the 

 little Corynactids (half an inch across), which you may 

 find dotted about like jewels, each composed of emerald, 

 ruby, topaz, and -creamy pink and lilac, on the under 

 surface of slabs of rock at very low tide in the 

 Channel Islands. One of the most puzzling facts in 

 natural history is that these lovely little things live 

 in the dark. No eye, even of fish or crab, has ever 

 seen what you see when you turn over that stone. It 

 is a simple demonstration of the truth of the poet 

 Gray's statement, that many a gem of purest ray serene 

 is concealed in the dark, unfathomed depths of ocean ! 

 A splendid anemone is the Weymouth Dianthus (see 

 the frontispiece of this volume), so named because it is 

 dredged up in Weymouth Bay. It is often six inches 

 long, and has its very numerous, small tentacles arranged 

 in lobes, or tufts, around the mouth. It is either of a 



