82 THE DAISY ANEMONE. 



Actinia hellis in this situation is externally of a dull 

 wainscot-yellow hue, paler towards the base, which is 

 usually buried in the mud. The disk is blackish 

 brown, freckled with grey and white spots, and the 

 tentacles are similarly coloured. In other particulars 

 as of form, arrangement and number of the tentacles, 

 &c , it agrees with the normal state of the species ; but 

 the body is thicker in proportion to the disk, which 

 has not the same tendency to assume the appearance 

 of a shallow cup. 



This was not the first occasion on which I had met 

 with this variety of the Daisy Actinia. A few days 

 before this I had taken a run up the inlet called the 

 Backwater, and had seen, towards the upper end, in the 

 shallows of the western side, a great number of dull 

 yellow objects scattered over the mud of the bottom. 

 You would suppose them to be pebbles, but on taking 

 one up, which you may easily do with your hand, if 

 you are in one of those little flat-bottomed skiffs that 

 are here called troughs, but at Poole bear the appella- 

 tion of canoes, — you perceive that you have captured 

 an Actinia. The soft, slimy, fetid mud affords no 

 proper surface for adhesion ; and hence the Anemones 

 can scarcely be said to adhere in the manner of the 

 genus, but simply to rest on their basal disk. This, 

 however, is not owing to any defect in the power of 

 adhesion, for on being removed into a vessel of sea- 

 water, they are soon found clung fast to the bottom 

 and sides. 



In one case I observed the interior of the stomach 

 protruded from the mouth, in the form of two flat 

 corrugated semicircular lobes of a greyish hue, that 



