SEA-ANEMONES. 361 



out of ruins ; wherever a plant can find room there Flora 

 appears with her lovely gifts. 



But the ocean also has its large radiate anemones, whose 

 lustrous petals, still more wonderful than those of the land, for 

 they are endowed with animal life, form the chief ornament of 

 the crystal tide-pools, or of the sheltered basins of our rock- 

 bound shores. 



More than twenty species of these marine flowers, many of 

 them displaying a gorgeous wreath of richly coloured tentacles., 

 are denizens of the British waters ; but the finest and largest 

 are found along the margin of the equatorial ocean, where they 

 occasionally measure a foot in diameter. Their tints are as 

 various as the arrangement of their prehensile crown ; fiery red 

 and apple-green, yellow and white as driven snow. Sometimes 

 the tentacles form a gorgon's head of long thick worms, clothed 

 in satin and velvet, and sometimes a thicket of delicate fila- 

 ments. 



Nothing seems more inoffensive than a sea-anemone ex- 

 panding its disc in the tranquil waters, but woe to the wandering 

 annelide, to the shrimp, or whelk, or nimble entomostracon, that 

 comes within reach of its urticating tentacles, for, plunged into 

 a fatal lethargy, jt is soon hurried to the gaping mouth of its 

 voracious enemy, ever ready to engulf it in a living tomb. The 

 morsel thus swallowed is retained in the stomach for ten or 

 twelve hours, when the undigested remains are regurgitated, 

 enveloped in a glairy fluid, not unlike the white of an egg. 

 The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion 

 to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. Thus Dr. 

 Johnstone mentions a specimen of Actinia crassicornis, that 

 might have been originally two inches in diameter, and that 

 had somehow contrived to swallow a scallop-valve 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 chances of double fare. A new 

 mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was 



