46 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



(3) The Yestlet Anemone, Cerfanthus Uoydii, Gosse. 



A fairly extensive colony of this somewhat rare tube- 

 building anemone was found between tide marks on the shore 

 of Piel Island, Barrow-in-Furness, in the spring of 1921. It 

 extends in a vertical direction from rather above low water 

 neap tides to beyond low water of the highest spring tides. 

 It spreads laterally from a short distance south of the ferry 

 pier, right round into that part of the Channel on the south 

 side of Piel Castle known as " Basspool." The shore is mostly 

 boulder clay with a surface of gravel which makes the extraction 

 of specimens usually a matter of some difficulty. An ordinary 

 garden spade has to be employed to get them out. The 

 presence of the anemone is recognised by the spreading tentacles 

 floating in the water just clear of the clay and gravel. A square 

 block about the width and depth of the spade and having the 

 anemone in the centre is dug out, carefully broken up, and the 

 felted tube with the anemone inside extracted. The tube is 

 seldom quite vertical in the clay. Its length varies from six 

 to nine inches, according to the size of the anemone. The 

 animal does not make any attempt to escape from its tube 

 when disturbed. It simply contracts, by expelling water, 

 to a fraction of its original size. The colony was examined 

 frequently till October and continues in a nourishing state. 

 Specimens were dug out from time to time and various experi- 

 ments made to keep them alive in the aquaria. They were 

 removed from their felty tubes and placed in upright glass- 

 tubes about half-an-inch bore and six to eight inches long. In 

 the first experiment the tubes were closely cemented to square 

 glass plates with sealing wax. This was unsuccessful. 

 Decomposition set in at the aboral extremity and gradually 

 extended to the disk and tentacles. In the next experiment 

 one end of the glass tube was softened in the flame of a blowpipe 

 and a rounded opening made at the side. The tube was again 

 cemented to the plate with sealing wax, taking care that the 



