MARINE ZOOLOGY OF ARRAN. 257 



artifice exercised by these curious creatures for the capture of 

 their food. " On one occasion," says Mr. Couch, " while 

 watching a specimen (A. coriacea) that was covered merely by 

 a rim of water, a bee, wandering near, darted through the 

 water to the mouth of the animal, evidently mistaking the 

 creature for a flower, and, though it struggled a great deal 

 to get free, was retained, until it was drowned, and was 

 then swallowed." * They are at once the most abstemious 

 and the most gormandizing of animated beings. They will 

 live without food for upwards of a year, and yet they may 

 be seen at all hours, and every day, angling, as it were, with 

 their tentacula, and catching crabs, pi-awns, limpets, peri- 

 winkles, dog-whelks, small fish, and, in short, whatever, in 

 the shape of fish, flesh, or fowl, is brought within their 

 reach. They retain their food for ten or twelve hours, and 

 then eject from the stomach the well-picked bones the 

 emptied shells of the crustaceans and mollnsca. Occasionally 

 a bone will stick in the throat. " I had once brought me a 

 specimen of A. crassicornis that might have been originally 

 two inches in diameter, and that had somehow contrived to 

 swallow a valve of Pecten maximus of the size of an ordinaiy 

 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 prevented ; yet, 

 instead of emaciating and dying of an atrophy, the animal 

 had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very 

 untoward accident, to increase its enjoyments and its chances 

 of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of 

 numerous tentacula, was opened up on what had been the 

 base, and led to the under stomach ; the individual had in- 

 deed become a sort of Siamese twin, but with greater 

 intimacy and extent in its unions." t Another remarkable 

 character in the natural history of the Actinias is, that, 



* Johnston's British Zoophytes, vol. i. p. 225. "fr Ibid. p. 235. 



s 



