Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/12

2 of the ocean would insist on behaving themselves in divers ways, looking strangely in the direction of sentient things, albeit their plantlike aspect looked contrariwise. Could Nature, just here, Janus-like, look two ways at once? Might it not be that these mysterious things were the habitants of a certain border-land of life? Another empiricism a generalization as splendid as that of the fisherman. So in complacent wisdom they called them zoophytes, namely—

.—Time, and a love of truth, will set a good deal right that seems inveterately wrong. Even this brilliant compromise must yield to the verdict that accrues from the patient study of facts generously collected and carefully collated. So this Janus myth, the zoophyte, which had become a cant word in science, turns out to be of no value as representing a fact in Nature. Though flower-forms they were, yet they were really animate things, and capable of acts indicative of will.

Our object now is to say something of one of these flower-like types of marine life, namely, the Sea-Anemone. It is significant, as showing the suggestiveness of these creatures, that, however diverse the nomenclature of science may be in regard to them, it is often almost poetical, and the words used are always expressive, and even possess pictorial significance. De Blainville named them Zoantharia, from which comes Animal Flower. Dr. Johnson's term took a wider latitude, and, although quite formidable-looking, and not in the best taste, was very significant. He gave the name, Zoophyte helianthoidea, which is to say, the Sunflower-like animal-plant. In these terms the animal nature and the flower-like form are intended. The creature is really a polyp, a soft, almost pulpy, sac-like structure, with a fringe of tentacles, like a halo of rays, around the upper end; in the centre of the circular fringe, the mouth, or oral aperture, being situated. Hence it is often spoken of as an actinia, which really means possessing rays. The word is now worked into another word, Actinozoa, meaning rayed-animals, that is to say, animals with rays around an oral disk. But the term is used to designate a class; hence it includes all the polyps, those that construct coral, and the others. This class is again divided into several orders, one of which is named Zoontharia, or, as it is sometimes called, the Helianthoid polyps. It is in this order that the actinia proper is found; and, therefore, it is there that we must find our sea-anemone.

Having found for this pretty object, in a system of science, "a local habitation and a name," let us see if we can make out the structure of a sea-anemone, or, as it is often called, an Actinia.

Taken in the hand, the sea-anemone imparts a slippery feeling, and it seems to have the consistency of leather. To get at its precise form, look at the cut given of Actinia rosea, a British species. Now, please follow closely our description a little while. As the actinia erects itself, attached to a rock or stone, it looks like one of the purses