VOL. LXV.] VHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 637 



credible havoc. I have seen an anemony of a moderate size swallow a smelt at 

 least 6 inches long. The limbs of this species, which are much thicker than 

 those of any other, being clipped, new ones shoot out as in former cases. The 

 progress of this reproduction, which is effected in a few days, is scarcely per- 

 ceptible ; and it is so perfect, that no protuberant ri in or visible scar remains. 

 Neither the colour, the size, nor the form are any ways altered. This anemony 

 is able to creep when deprived of its limbs ; which seems to prove, that the 

 communication, which is thought to exist between the limbs and the hollow 

 muscles, may be interrupted, without sensibly restraining the animal's locomo- 

 tive powers. Those limbs, it is true, enable the animal to crawl when turned 

 on its back ; but do by no means serve as legs for walking steadily, as hath been 

 erroneously asserted, and misrepresented in ill-drawn figures. I made krge 

 incisions on several anemonies in the sea, which healed in a very short time ; but 

 I always took care not to injure the basis, as any considerable wound, and es- 

 pecially the least rent, on that part of this species, proves often mortal. I do 

 not mean to question the possibility of what hath been repeatedly said of an 

 anemony, which not being able to void a muscle it had swallowed, forced it out 

 through a rent it made with the muscle itself at its basis, and that this rent was 

 soon after perfectly cicatrized. But a love of the marvellous too plainly appears 

 throughout the whole narration, and the inferences drawn fiom the fact give 

 room to suspect, that little attention had been paid to the concomitant circum- 

 stances. Wounds of this nature often occasion a disorder in the interior part of 

 the anemony, the progress of which soon brings on its total dissolution. Of all 

 the kinds of sea anemonies, I should prefer this for the table : being boiled 

 some time in sea water, they acquire a firm and palatable consistence, and may 

 then be eaten with any kind of sauce. They are of an inviting appearance, of 

 a light shivering texture, and of a soft white and reddish hue. Their smell is 

 not unlike that of a warm crab or lobster. I have seen some of the young of 

 this species, but have not been able to make any discovery concerning their 

 mode of propagation. 



A detail of my former observations and experiments would be here a useless 

 repetition : I shall therefore only observe, that the semi-anemonies of the 3d 

 species have so entirely recovered the parts they had been deprived of, whether 

 the superior or the basis, that no manner of difference could be perceived. 

 Some of the men of learning, whom my first discoveries brought to my study, 

 imagined that the basis was the most essential part of the animal, and that the 

 mouth and limbs were to be considered only as extremities. I was myself in- 

 clined to adopt that notion, seeing that in all the species abovementioned, the 

 basis ever gave the greatest marks of sensibility, that the intestines are situated 

 in that region, &c. but who, on seeing the upper part of an anemony producing 



