250 
Rustic Adornments. 
furnish dramatic scenes for general entertainment, and arrest the attention of 
the least studious members of the household. 
After all, sea anemones (see p. 254), are most to be desired, and the choice 
afforded even to the merest tyro is a large one. The hardy Beadlet, already 
referred to, the pretty gem ( Bunodes gemmacea ), the daisy ( Sagartia bellis ), 
the cave anemone ( Sagartia troglodytes ), and the great plumose anemone 
(Actinoloba dianthus ), afford examples of species unsurpassed by all the rest 
in beauty, yet all so hardy that they need but little skill to keep them in 
health and vigour for years. In truth, useful as are many of the smaller 
kinds for the sake of variety, and because, if we love these things at 
all, we hunger for as many as can be got, the plumose anemone is the 
grandest of the group, and 
a marine aquarium of any 
pretensions is incomplete 
without it. 
In the conveyance of 
sea-side gatherings there 
must be as much care 
taken as in obtaining them. 
Such things as baskets, 
bottles, and jars, will natur¬ 
ally suggest themselves as 
useful. As a matter of 
course also, there will be 
need for sea-water (artifi¬ 
cial sea-water is never to 
be thought of if the real article is obtainable) for the use of the 
creatures captured. But it is well to bear in mind, that with the 
exception of fishes, which must be conveyed in water, almost everything 
else will travel more safely packed in wet sea-weed, more especially 
as when so treated they are not liable to injury by being shaken about 
as when immersed in a body of fluid that must be more or less agitated. 
Anemones will live for several days in a mass of wet sea-weed ; shore crabs 
and shrimps will hold their own for several hours under the same conditions. 
There need be but little conveyance in water, and when that plan is adopted, 
it is advisable to employ a sufficient number of vessels to avoid over-crowding, 
and also to allow of some kind of classification to prevent warfare and its 
STAR FISH AND ALG/E. 
