THE SEA -ANEMONE. 117 



This wonderful daisy of the waters, this flower-like creature, 

 which thus evidently reveals its true animal nature, is dis- 

 seminated over the ocean in numerous genera and species, 

 forming one of the families of the wide-spread class of the 

 polyps. In all the Sea-anemones we find an oval or oblong 



Actinia Alcyonoidea. 



mouth, leading into a sack-like stomachal cavity, and surrounded 

 by a crown of tentacles, sometimes resembling a Gorgon's head 

 of long thick worms clothed in satin and velvet, and sometimes 

 forming a dense thicket of slender filaments. The colours of 

 these wonderful organs are as various as their dimensions 

 scarlet, green, azure, orange, or milk-white, but their beauty 

 only appears when in the expanded state, for the contracted 

 sea-anemone is grey or brown like the stone to which it clings. 

 Veiling its beauty under this homely disguise, it no doubt escapes 

 many dangers, and the sand and shell-fragments that frequently 

 remain attached to its viscid body still further help to screen it 

 from its enemies. Its flowery disk spreading over a carpet of 

 algae, the Actinia, seemingly as insensible as the surrounding sea- 

 weeds, might well be taken for the image of harmless innocence ; 

 but woe to the nimble cyclops, or to the wandering annelide, 



