THE CAVE-DWELLING ANEMONE. 97 



removed all the animals save one — the most valuable, — 

 which could not be found, and which I concluded was the 

 source of the mischief. The vase stood, however, in an 

 empty room till last Tuesday [April 20], — so you may guess 

 the strength of the pickle, — when I emptied out the whole 

 kettle of fish, and found Monsieur at the bottom. He is only 

 the shadow of himself, and looks uncommonly seedy ; but 

 is a character, nevertheless." 



While writing this article, I have had an opportunity, for 

 the first time, of seeing the discharge of true ova from an 

 Anemone. In a saucer, containing a Corynactis and some 

 varieties of troglodytes, that was standing on my library 

 table, I found, on the morning of the 28th of April, that 

 there had been deposited during the night an even layer of 

 pale brown substance on the bottom, so placed as to make 

 it uncertain whether it had proceeded from the Corynactis 

 or from one of the troglodytes. The mass was about as 

 large as a fourpenny-piece. A little taken up with a 

 pipette, and examined under a power of 500 diam., proved 

 to be composed of ova, opaque, perfectly globular, varying 

 from .0043 to .0051 inch (but the former was an unusually 

 small one) : they were mostly very uniform in size, viz. 

 .0050 inch. They had a clear well-defined edge, and not 

 the slightest appearance of cilia. 



I removed the troglodytes to a clean part of the saucer (it 

 was the beautiful orange var. auricoma), and after a few 

 hours perceived that it was discharging more ova, which 

 were streaming over its lower tentacles, as it lay on its side, 

 but fully expanded. I therefore immediately transferred it 

 to a straight-sided glass box for closer examination. 



As soon as it had expanded again after the shock of 

 removal, which it did in a few minutes, I began to watch 

 it. It was lying on its side, with its disk and expanded 

 tentacles near the glass side, and facing my eye. Many of 



H 



