MORALS AND MANNERS. 139 



old age, if no one midges the elbow of Atropos, and causes 

 that grim lady suddenly to cut the thread.* Nor is it 

 easy to nudge the old lady's elbow. The Anemone has 

 more lives than a cat. We have already seen (p. 19) how 

 it will resist slashing and amputation ; and, except zoo- 

 logists and the fierce little Eolis, I know no animal which, 

 finding its flavour agreeable, cares to make a meal of it. 

 Yet curiously enough, this Anemone, whose vitality is so 

 remarkable, who may be hacked and hewed without appear- 

 ing to suffer from it, dies almost immediately if removed 

 from salt-water to fresh. It will live for days out of water, 

 but in fresh-water it will not live at all. There is a problem 

 for the physiologist. He will probably see in it the effect of 

 endosmosis, by which all the fluids in the tissue of the Actinia 

 are suddenly so diluted as to be rendered unfit for the vital 

 processes. 



The Anemone has little more than beauty to recommend 

 it ; the indications of intelligence being of by no means a 

 powerful order. What then ? Is beauty nothing ? Beauty 

 is the subtle charm which draws us from the side of the en- 

 lightened Miss Grosser to that of the lovely though " quite 

 unintellectuar' Caroline, whose conversation is not of a 

 novel or brilliant kind; whereas Miss Grosser has read a 

 whole Encyclopaedia, and is so obliging as to retail many 

 pages of it freely in her conversation. 



* The age to which an Actinia may live has not yet been definitely ascer- 

 tained ; but Professor Fleming at Edinburgh has [Oct. 1857] one in his 

 possession, which was taken at North Berwick in 1S2S ; so that, at the very 

 least, it must be twenty-eight years old, that period having been passed in 

 confinemei^t. 



