Sea-Anemones. 



57 



~l 



Fig. 160. 







They move from one place to another very rarely, and then very 

 slowly. If they are disturbed, they contract themselves into such small 

 masses, forcing out the sea-water they have taken up, that they are 

 almost unrecognisable. Their tenacity 

 of life is extraordinary and enables 

 them to be easily kept in aquaria; 

 in many cases one and the same indi- 

 vidual has been kept alive for years. 

 One is said to have lived for over 50 

 years in a small aquarium in Edin- 

 burgh and to have brought forth thou- 

 sands of young ones during that time. 

 Some Anemones are eaten by the 

 poorer classes of Naples. 



Of the numerous kinds of Ane- 

 mones many are richly coloured ; we 

 would mention especially the common 

 Anemonia sulcata (Fig. 160) which 

 grows in hundreds on the rocks, like 

 flowers in a bed. Finer even than this 

 is one which has up to the present 

 time only been found in the Bay of 

 Naples, the Alicia (Fig. 111). It 

 lives at great depths and, being of rare 



occurrence, is not always present in the Aquarium. When expanded, 

 i. e. when the body and tentacles are swelled out with sea-water, this 

 species is probably one of the finest. Adamsia (Fig. 136) is interesting 

 an account of its habit of sharing the possession of some whelk- or other 

 shell with a hermit-crab, by which it allows itself to be carried about 

 (tank 23, see p. 72). On the slightest contact it draws in its tentacles. 

 The orange-red Cereactis exhibits fine colouring (Fig. 51). Cerianthus 

 (Fig. 134) differs from the other Sea-anemones in not being fixed; it lives 

 in a loose covering which it makes deep in the sand, only a small portion 

 of its body projecting (tank 22). It is one of the largest Sea-anemones 

 and reaches a length of 8 inches; a specimen in the Aquarium has 

 lived 1 1 years. 



Proceeding from the Actiniae we can now more easily understand 

 the structure of the Corals^ If the Anemones had the power to deposit 

 a calcareous covering on the outside of their body, or a similar skeleton 

 within their body-wall, these hard parts would, after the death of the 

 animal , be termed corals. The fine orange-coloured Coral , Astroides 

 (Fig. 52), which lives on the rocks of tank No. 9, may be considered 

 as an Anemone provided with such a calcareous framework. Spreading 

 out their rings of tentacles the numerous animals side by side present 

 the appearance of an orange-coloured carpet, but then the framework is 

 not visible. Only after the orange-coloured animal has died and decayed 

 away, the remaining white calcareous skeleton becomes visible in the 

 form of a honeycomb; this can be seen in several parts of the tank. 

 The coast of Italy is in many places covered with this coral; those who 



