THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



SEA-ANEMONES AND LITHOPHYTES. 



Submarine Gardens. Internal Structure of the Sea-anemones. Tentacles. 

 Urticating Organs. Their Remarkable Tenacity of Life. Their Modes of 

 Locomotion. Lithophy tes. Social Republicans. Coral-islands. 



WHO has ever sojourned on a rocky coast, worn and hollowed by 

 the breakers of a thousand years, without admiring the crystal 

 tide-pools, those charming relics of the receding flood, so full of 

 all that can fascinate the naturalist, or enchant the poet. For 

 the calm and transparent waters of these miniature lakes harbour 

 a little world of animals and plants of such wonderful variety 

 and elegance of form that the eye never tires of gazing on their 

 loveliness, and the memory reckons them ever after among the 

 chief beauties of the beautiful ocean. There, bathed in liquid 

 crystal, delicate sea-weeds spread their graceful fronds, or clothe 

 the naked rock with a velvet carpet ; there annelides, and crusta- 

 ceans, and molluscs of all forms and colours, reposing, wander- 

 ing, darting, creeping, or swimming, enliven the ever-changing 

 scene, and there, not the least ornament of these fairy gardens, 

 the radiate Sea-anemones, emulating the daisies of the fields, 

 expand their lustrous disks. 



Desirous of plucking one of these elegant flowers of the ocean, 

 you extend your hand, but at the slightest touch its beautiful 

 coronet begins to curl and pucker its margin, and to incurve it 

 in the form of a cup. If further annoyed, the rim of this cup 

 contracts more and more, until the animated blossom, now 

 transformed into a shrivelled shapeless mass, and receding all 

 the time from the rude assault, retires under the cover of its 

 rocky fortress, or clings with such tenacity to the stone to which 

 it is attached that you will sooner tear it to pieces than make 

 it forego its grasp. 



