278 SEA ANEMONE. 



shoals have their being, yet the resources of nature 

 are mightier than them all ; and man may fish away, 

 fully assured that for every fish that he can catch, not- 

 withstanding the utmost endeavours of his skill and 

 his industry, nature will be sure to provide a thousand. 

 So excessive, indeed, is the production, so full is that 

 pale green expanse, which we in the inaccuracy of our 

 speech sometimes call the " waste of waters," so full 

 and exuberant is it of the springs of life, that all 

 which man can win from its stores is not more in com- 

 parison than one little pebble from the ample bed of a 

 mighty river ; and what man does withdraw has this 

 beautiful adaptation in it, that he takes both the pre- 

 datory fish and the prey. 



We are too little acquainted with the general history 

 and economy of the deep, to be able to say what may 

 be the food of all its animated inhabitants. Some 

 of them may eat its vegetable productions ; but in 

 general these seem rather to protect the spawn and the 

 fry, than to be consumed as food ; and whatever be 

 the size, form, and habits of the animal, we find it 

 living upon other animals, and not unfrequently on its 

 own kind among the rest. It may be adapted for 

 swimming rapidly through the water, for crawling 

 among the holes of the rocks, or it may be fastened to 

 the rock, and have externally the character of a plant 

 rather than an animal ; but we almost invariably find it 

 living upon animal food. 



The common sea anemone, (actinia aquina,) which is 

 so common upon most of the rocky shores of this 

 country, appears, when left dry by the tide, to be a 

 little hemispherical lump of jelly, the texture of which 



