BY THE SEASIDE— ANIMAL LIFE 



tractive. In many respects Sea Anemones resemble 

 the Hydra, one of the pond dwellers, they are rather 

 more highly developed, however. Any Sea Anemone 

 will serve our purpose because we are about to ex- 

 amine the little darts with which its tentacles, and 

 even its body, are armed. If we find several different 

 kinds of Anemone, we must take the most trans- 

 parent we can find and also a small specimen; 

 we can examine the larger, more opaque ones later. 

 Having transferred our specimen to a small jar, 

 containing but a small quantity of sea water, we 

 wait till it has recovered from its transfer and spread 

 its tentacles, then it must be killed by one of the 

 methods suggested in our concluding chapter (see 

 p. 306). One of the tentacles must then be snipped 

 off with scissors — some people cut off the tentacle 

 without killing the Anemone and the animal does 

 not appear to suffer a great amount of inconveni- 

 ence, in fact a new tentacle soon grows to take 

 the place of the old one. We do not recommend 

 promiscuous vivisection. The tentacle is placed on 

 a clean slide, a cover slip placed over it and pres- 

 sure is applied. An enormous number of little 

 thread-like darts are pressed from all parts of the 

 tentacle. In some cases, little oval capsules are 

 squeezed out and, in the capsules, the darts may 

 be plainly seen, coiled up. On applying pressure 

 to a capsule, the contained dart will shoot forth, 

 much as does a glove finger turned inside out, when 

 !we blow violently into the glove. These little darts 

 I are of the greatest interest to the microscopist ; they 



209 o 



