OCEAN GAUDENS ; 



monstersj whose seeming delicate petals are but their 

 thousand Briarean arms^ disguised as the petals of a 

 flower^ and expanded to seize the unconscious victim 

 as he passes near the beautiful form — fatal to him 

 as the crater of a volcano ; in which he is soon 

 engulphed by the closing tentacles of his unsus- 

 pected enemy. And if he pass not near enough for 

 that deadly floral embrace, those pretty crimson 

 tubercles that dot so gracefiiUy the seeming stalk, 

 beneath the seeming flower, can shoot forth a thread, 

 armed, like the fisher's line, with a barbed hook, 

 which strikes and secures the distant prey ; and so 

 the unwary Annelid or Infusory is captured and 

 devoured. In this capacity the creature has been 

 compared to Pope's spider, who 



Feels at each, thread, and lives along the line.'' 



But then the living thread of the Actinia (or of the 

 Cirriped^ which has a similar power) is a fact, while 

 the sensitive gossamer of the poet is a fiction. 



But notwithstanding these ogre4ike attributes, 

 the lovelv Actinia Ions; deceived our naturalists as 

 to its true nature — and of course the poets— from 

 whom his flower -like disc and petaloid tentacles 

 completely concealed his grosser nature. Then, as 

 the tide recedes, he so meekly closes his beautiful 



14 



