THE PLUMOSE ANEMONE. 749 



If a portion of a tentacle be examined under a moderately powerful microscope, it 

 will be seen to be studded with tiny cells, in each of which lies coiled a dark thread. On 

 applying pressure to the cell, it suddenly discharges the coiled thread, which proves on 

 a closer examination to be a long, wiry dart, often of wondrously complex structure, 

 and capable of penetrating into any soft substance with which it comes in contact. 

 Elaborate accounts and drawings of these cells and their contained weapons may be 

 found in Mr. Gosse's valuable "British Sea-Anemones and Corals," a work to which I 

 gladly refer my readers for many interesting details respecting the beautiful creatures on 

 which we are at present engaged. 



Though the human skin be a tougher and harder substance than the prey generally 

 brought into contact with the tentacles, it yet can feel the effects of the individually 

 minute but collectively potent weapons with which these delicate tentacles are armed. 

 A finger which is touched by a tentacle is instantly conscious of being seized, as it were, 

 and forced to adhere to the soft waving membrane which it could crush with a single 

 effort. On most persons this adherence has no particular effect ; but those who possess 

 delicate skins, and a sensitive nervous system, are much worried by blisters and pustules 

 occasioned by the assaults of these microscopical weapons. A young eel, measuring six 

 inches in length and half an inch in thickness, was killed in a few minutes by mere 

 contact with the tentacles, and in a very short time was tucked quietly away in the 

 creature's stomach. These weapons are most numerous at the tips of the tentacles, just 

 where they are most needed. 



IN the right-hand lower corner of the illustration may be seen the SCOTTISH PEARLET, 

 a member of a genus once thought very rare in England, but now necessarily expanded 

 into a family, and found to contain a considerable number of species, even in our own 

 seas. Most of the Paarlets are able to crawl over solid bodies ; some inhabit tubes ; 

 others are found burrowing in the sand; while nearly all are able to puff out the hinder 

 part of the column with water. 



Little is known respecting the history of the Scottish Pearlet, save that it is a very 

 rare species, and has only been found in deep water. All the tentacles are very slender, 

 arid marked with a dark line. 



The PUFFLETS are so called because they possess the power of puffing out the hinder 

 part of the column until it assumes a somewhat globular shape. A British species of 

 this genus, the PAINTED PUFFLET (Edwardsia callimorpha), appears to be one of the 

 burrowers, its body being hidden beneath the sand, and the beautiful tentacles just pro- 

 truding from the surface. None of the Pufflets have many tentacles. 



WE may here briefly notice another example of the same family. 



The VESTLET is one of those members of the family which inhabit tubes. All of 

 them are remarkable from the fact that they possess nu adherent base, but, as a compen- 

 sation for this deficiency, are furnished with an adherent power upon the stem, enabling 

 them to crawl freely over solid bodies. In this species, the tube is cylindrical, and very 

 wide in comparison with the dimensions of the inhabitant : it is* of tough, paper-like 

 consistence, rather thick, and is composed of many layers of intertwining fibres, mixed 

 with sand and mud. The ordinary length of the animal is six or seven inches, and the 

 width of the flower-like plumes about an inch and a half. Mr. Gosse found that he was 

 able to remove the creature from its opaque dwelling, and place it in a tube of glass, 

 which the animal accepted as an useful substitute, without troubling itself to reconstruct 

 another house. 



THE beautiful creature which is shown in the centre of the next engraving, under the 

 name of PLUMOSE ANEMONE, is certainly the most magnificent of the known British 

 species. 



It may be at once recognised by its bold cylindrical stem, firm and sturdy as the 

 oak trunk, standing out bravely from the object to which it is affixed, and crowned with 

 its lovely tufted tentacles, fringed and cut like the petals of the pink. Its colour is 

 extremely variable, being snowy white, olive, red, orange, cream, or pale pink ; and of all 



