SEA ANEMONES. 205 
case of Actinia willet. Wishing to detach this anemone from the 
aquarium, this gentleman used every effort to effect his purpose ; but 
only succeeded, after violent exertions, in tearing the lower part of 
the animal. Six portions remained attached to the glass walls of the 
aquarium. At the end of eight days, attempts were again made to 
detach these fragments ; but it was observed, with much surprise, 
that they shrank from the touch, and contracted themselves. Each 
of them soon became crowned with a little row of tentacula, and 
finally each fragment became a new anemone. Every part of these 
strange creatures thus becomes a separate being when detached, 
while the mutilated parent continues to live as if nothing had 
happened. It has long been known that the sea anemones may be 
cut limb from limb, mutilated, divided, and subdivided. One part 
of the body cut off is quickly replaced. Cut off the tentacles of an 
actinia, and they are replaced in a short time, and the experiment 
may be repeated indefinitely. The experiments made by M. 
Trembley of Geneva upon the fresh-water hydra were repeated by 
the Abbé Dicquemare on the sea anemones. He mutilated and 
tormented them in a hundred ways. ‘The parts cut off continued to 
live, and the mutilated creature had the power of reproducing the 
parts of which it had been deprived. To those who accused the 
abbé of cruelty in thus torturing the poor creatures, he replied that, 
so far from being a cause of suffering to them, “he had increased 
their term of life, and renewed their youth.” 
The Actiniade vary in their habitat from pools near low-water 
mark to eighteen or twenty fathoms water, whence they have been 
dredged up. ‘‘ They adhere,” says Dr. Johnston, “ to rocks, shells, 
and other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous secretion from 
their enlarged base, but they can leave their hold and remove to 
another station whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding along 
with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five 
minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and 
using the tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Réaumur asserts, and 
as I have once witnessed ; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, 
so as to render it more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are 
driven to a distance by the random motion of the waves. They feed 
on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and on very many species of shelled 
mollusca, and probably on all animals brought within their reach 
whose strength or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the 
grasp of their numerous tentacula ; for as these organs can be turned 
about in any direction, and greatly lengthened, they are capable of 
being applied to every point, and adhere by suction with considerable 
