36 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 



" To test this power of penetration still farther, as well as 

 to try whether it is brought into exercise on the contact of a 

 foreign body with the living Anemone, I instituted the follow- 

 ing experiment. With a razor I took shavings of the cuticle 

 from the callous part of my own foot. One of these shavings 

 I presented to the tentacles of a fully expanded Tealia crass-i- 

 cornis ( Urticina crassicornis of Europe and America). After 

 contact, and momentary adhesion, I withdrew the cuticle, and 

 examined it under a power of 600 diameters. I found, as I 

 had expected, cnidoe standing up endwise, the wires in every 

 case shot into the substance. They were not numerous — in a 

 space of .01 inch square, I counted about a dozen. * * * 



" These examples prove that the slightest contact with the 

 proper organs of the Anemone is sufficient to provoke the dis- 

 charge of the cnidce ; and that even the densest condition of 

 the human skin offers no impediment to the penetration of the 

 ecthorcea. 



" As to the injection of a poison, it is indubitable that pain, 

 and in some cases death, ensues even to vertebrate animals 

 from momentary contact with the capsuliferous organs of the 

 Zoophyta. * * * I have elsewhere recorded an instance 

 in which a little fish, swimming about in health and vigor, 

 died in a few minutes with great agony through the momen- 

 tary contact of its lip with one of the emitted acontia of Sa- 

 gartia parasitica. It is worthy of observation, that, in this 

 case, the fish carried away a portion of the acontium sticking 

 to its lip ; the force with which it adhered being so great, that 

 the integrity of the tissues yielded first. The acontium severed, 

 rather than let go its hold. 



" Now, in the experiments which I have detailed above, we 

 have seen that this adhesion is effected by the actual impene- 

 tration of the foreign body by a multitude of the ecthorcea. 



