VORACITY OF THE ANEMONE. 127 



from limpets to worms, from fish to roast beef It has even 

 a reputation for voracity, not to say gourmandise ; in the 

 matter of shell-fish it would put even Dando to the blush. 

 Dr Johnston, in his valuable History of British Zoophytes, 

 relates this anecdote : " I had once brought to me a specimen 

 of Actinia crassicornis that might originally have been two 

 inches in diameter, and that had somehow contrived to 

 swallow a valve of Pecten maximus of the size of an 

 ordinary saucer. The shell fixed within the stomach was so 

 placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the 

 body stretched tensely over had become thin and flattened 

 like a pancake. All communication between the inferior 

 portion of the stomach and the mouth was of course pre- 

 vented ; yet instead of emaciating and dying of an atrophy, 

 the animal had availed itself of what had midoubtedly been a 

 very untoward accident, to increase its enjoyments and its 

 chance of double fare. A new mouth furnished with two 

 rows of numerous tentacles was opened upon what liad been 

 the base, and led to the under stomach — the individual had 

 become a sort of Siamese Twin, but with greater intimacy 

 and extent in its unions." Such is the blind voracity of this 

 animal, that anything and everything is carried straightway 

 into its stomach to be there tried, and rejected only on 

 proved incompatibility. 



One day, while sorting and distributing to their respective 

 jars the animals captured during the morning's hunt, I was 

 called into the balcony by the agitated entreaties of lovely 

 Sixteen, exclaiming, " Oh, do come ! do come, and rescue 

 this green Anemone from a great nasty beetle.'' I went to 



