THE LASSO-THROWERS. 69 
examined it under the microscope he found it full of 
lasso-threads, standing up like pins in the skin, and 
showing what wounds an anemone can inflict. Now, 
when we reflect what a large number of tentacles 
many anemones have (a full-grown daisy anemone has 
more than seven hundred), we see that they must 
possess an almost countless number of lasso-cells, 
and that small sea animals, such as shrimps, worms, 
mussels, sea-slugs, and young fish, must fall easy 
victims to the poisonous threads. Even if any crea- 
ture is so well protected by its shell as to escape the 
darts, it is encircled by the numerous arms and thrust 
into the stomach, at the bottom of which it meets 
with another thick coil of lasso-threads (c, Fig. 25) 
which are soon fatal.* 
In this way the sea-anemones obtain abundance 
of food, and they seem able to devour an almost 
unlimited amount. But they in their turn are evi- 
dently very open to attack, having such soft defence- 
less bodies ; and in fact thousands of them must be 
devoured every day by sea-slugs and other animals, for 
they multiply so very rapidly that otherwise the whole 
shore would be covered with them. A sea-anemone 
can increase in three ways, either by splitting in half, 
or by throwing out buds, or, as is most common, by 
hatching the young from eggs within its body. It is 
most curious to see in an aquarium how quickly a 
crop of young sea-anemones springs up round the old 
ones. Mr. Holdsworth found that daisy anemones 
sometimes throw out as many as 1 46, 1 60, and even 
* Mr. Charters White has told me of the case of a young fish 
struggling within the stomach of a sea-anemone and coming out unin- 
jured ; but such cases are rare, and may occur from some weakness or 
indolence in the particular anemone in question. 
