SEA ANEMONES. 20/ 



" The brilliancy of its colours and the great elegance of its tentacular 

 crown when fully expanded," says Professor Allman, "render it 

 eminently attractive ; hundreds may often be seen in a single pool, and 

 few sights will be remembered with greater pleasure by the naturalist 

 than that presented by these little zoophytes, as they expand their 

 green and rosy crowns amid the algas, millepores, and plumy corals, 

 co-tenants of their rock-covered vase !" 



The toxicological properties of the Actinia have been attributed to 

 certain special cells full ot liquid ; but M. Hollard believes that these 

 effects are neither constant enough nor sufficiently general to con- 

 stitute the chief function of these organs, which are found in all the 

 species and over their whole surface, external and internal. Though 

 quite incapable of discerning their prey at a distance, the sea ane- 

 mone seizes it with avidity when it comes to offer itself up a victim. 

 If some adventurous little worm, or some young and sluggish crus- 

 tacean, happens to ruffle the expanded involucrum of an actinia in 

 its lazy progress through the water, the animal strikes it at once with 

 its tentacles, and instinctively sweeps it into its open mouth. This 

 habit may be observed in any aquarium, and is a favourite spectacle 

 at the " Jardin d'Acclimatation " of Paris, at noon on Sundays and 

 Wednesdays, when the aquatic animals are fed. Small morsels of 

 food are thrown into the water. Prawns, shrimps, and other crus- 

 taceans and zoophytes inhabiting this medium, chase the morsels as 

 they sink to the bottom of the basin ; but it is otherwise with the 

 Actinia ; the morsels glide downward within the twentieth part of an 

 inch of their crown without their presence being suspected. It requires 

 the aid of a directing wand, directed by the hand of the keeper, to 

 guide the food right down on the animal. Then its arms or tentacles 

 seize upon the prey, and its repast commences forthwith. 



The Actinia are at once gluttonous and voracious. They seize 

 their food with the help of their tentacula, and engulf in their 

 stomach, as we have seen, substances of a volume and consistence 

 which contrast strangely with their dimensions and softness. In less 

 than an hour, M. Hollard observed that one of these creatures voided 

 the shell of a mussel, and disposed of a crab all to its hardest parts ; 

 nor was it slow to reject these hard parts, by turning its stomach 

 inside out, as one might turn out one's pocket, in order to empty it 

 of its contents. We have seen in Dr. Johnston's account of A. cras- 

 sicornis, that when threatened with death by hunger, from having 

 swallowed a shell which separated it into two halves, at the end of 

 eleven days it had opened a new mouth, provided with separate rows 

 of tentacula. The accident which, in ordinary animals, would have 



