16 
Tanks No. 8, 9, 21, 22 and 23. 
a spirally coiled thread. When the animal comes in contact with its 
enemies or its prey thousands of these stinging - cells burst, ejecting 
forcibly the long filament; this bears a sharp point and is often barbed, 
while the noxious liquid in its core renders the tiny wound it makes 
sufficiently poisonous to benumb or even kill. The ejection may be com¬ 
pared to blowing out the fingers of a glove when they are tucked in. —- 
The Anemones are extremely voracious: they are not content with feeding 
on the pieces of meat given them, but also catch living worms, crabs, 
snails and fishes w r hich are often much larger than themselves. 
They move from one place to another very rarely, and then very 
slowly. If they are disturbed, they contract themselves into such small 
masses, forcing out the sea-water they have taken up, that they are 
almost unrecognisable. Their tenacity of life is extraordinary and enables 
them to be easily kept in aquaria; in many cases one and the same 
individual has been kept alive for years. One is said to have lived 
for over 50 years in a small aquarium in Edinburgh and to have brought 
forth thousands of young ones during that time. — Some anemones are 
eaten by the poorer classes of Naples. 
Of the numerous kinds of Anemones many are richly coloured; we 
would mention especially the common Anemonia sulcata (Fig. 5) which 
grows in hundreds on the rocks, like flowers in a bed (tank 8). Finer 
even than this is one which has up to the present time only been found 
in the Bay of Naples, the Cladactis (Fig. 6). It lives at great depths 
and, being of rare occurrence, is not always present in the Aquarium 
(tank 21). When expanded, i. e. when the body and tentacles are swelled 
out with sea-water, this species is probably one of the finest. Adamsia 
(Fig. 7) is interesting an account of its habit of sharing the possession 
of some whelk- or other shell with a hermit-crab, by which it allows itself 
to be carried about (tank 23, see p. 41). On the slightest contact it draws 
in its tentacles. The orange-red Cereactis exhibits fine colouring (Fig. 8, 
tank 9, in the foreground). Cerianthus (Fig. 9) differs from the other 
Sea-anemones in not being fixed; it lives in a loose covering which it 
makes deep in the sand, only a small portion of its body projecting 
(tank 22). It is one of the largest Sea-anemones and reaches a length 
of 8 inches; a specimen in the Aquarium has lived 11 years. 
Proceeding from the Actiniae we can now more easily understand 
the structure of the Corals. If the Anemones had the power to deposit 
a calcareous covering on the outside of their body, or a similar skeleton 
within their body-wall, these hard parts would, after the death of the 
animal, be termed corals. The fine orange-coloured Coral, Astroides 
(Fig. 10), which lives on the rocks of tank No. 9, may be considered 
as an Anemone provided with such a calcareous framework. The animal 
generally unfolds in weak light, i. e. under a clouded sky; spreading out 
their rings of tentacles the numerous animals side by side present the 
appearance of an orange-coloured carpet. In strong light they contract 
and appear much more insignificant. But even then the framework is not 
visible. Only after the orange-coloured animal has died and decayed away, 
the remaining white calcareous skeleton becomes visible in the form of a 
honeycomb; this can be seen in several parts of the tank. The coast 
