SEA-WORMS AND SEA-ANEMONES 83 



and carry a virulent poison, so that they are " stinging " 

 threads. Excitement of the animal, or mere contact, 

 causes the microscopic sac to burst, and the thread 

 to be violently ejected. The sea-anemones, jelly-fish, 

 and polyps feed on fresh living animals, small fish, 

 shrimps, etc., and catch their prey by the use of these 

 poisonous threads. Some jelly-fish have them big 

 enough to act upon the human skin, and bathers are 

 often badly stung by them. The commonest jelly-fish 

 do not sting, but where they occur a few of the stinging 

 sort are likely to occur also. Even some sea-anemones 

 can sting one's hand with these stinging threads. One 

 sea-anemone (known as " Cerianthus "), occasionally taken 

 in British waters, makes for itself a leathery tube by 

 the felting of its stinging threads, and lines its long 

 burrow in the sand below tidal exposure in this way. 



The sea-anemones are very hardy, and they are 

 wonderfully varied and abundant on our coasts. Some 

 sixty years ago a great naturalist, who loved the sea- 

 shore and its rock-pools enthusiastically, Mr. Philip 

 Henry Gosse, father of Mr. Edmund ,Gosse, the dis- 

 tinguished man of letters, described our British sea- 

 anemones, and gave beautiful coloured pictures of them. 

 One of these I have taken for the frontispiece of this 

 volume, and some of the outline figures of marine 

 animals in these chapters are borrowed from a marvel- 

 ously complete and valuable little book by him now 

 long out of print entitled " Marine Zoology." His books 

 of high scientific value and his example, made sea- 

 anemones " fashionable." London ladies kept marine 

 aquariums in their drawing-rooms stocked with these 

 beautiful flowers of the sea. They were exhibited in 

 quantity at the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, 

 and it is by no means a creditable thing to our London 



