186 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
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 ; hut 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 theso strange crea- 
tures thus becomes a separate being when detached, while the mutilated 
mother continues to live as if nothing had happened. In short, 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 in- 
definitely. The experiments made by M. Trembley of Geneva upon 
the fresh-water polypi were repeated by the Abbe Dicquemare in 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 tho Abbe 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 Adiniaclss 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 ex- 
traneous 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 Reaumur assorts, 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. Thoy feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and 
similar shelled inollusca, 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 inflected in any direction, and greatly lengthened, they are capable 
of being applied to every point, and adhere by suction with consider- 
