177 



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, prawns, 

 limpets, periwinkles, 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 mollusca. 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 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 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 indeed become a 

 sort of Siamese twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its 

 unions.' 'f Another remarkable character in the natural history of 

 the Actiniae is, that, though impatient of ill-treatment under certain 

 conditions, as when torn abruptly from their attachment to the rock, 

 or when confined in water not sufficiently pure, they are almost 

 indestructible by the usual methods of destruction. " They may be 

 immersed in water, hot enough" says Dr. Johnston, "to blister 

 their skin, or frozen in a mass of ice and again thawed ; and they 

 may be placed within the exhausted receiver of the air-pump, 

 without being deprived of life, or disabled from resuming their usual 

 functions when placed in a favourable situation. If the tentacula 

 are clipped off they soon begin to bud anew, and if again cut away 

 they grow again." { The finer specimens of these two species, as 

 found in this locality, will occasionally measure from four to six 

 inches across. 



110. With the exception of the above examples, the coast line 

 of Arran is not prolific in a variety of zoophytes. A few other forms 



* Johnston's British Zoophytes, vol. i., p. 225. 



t Ibid, p. 235. t MM, P- 239. 



