Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/16

6 balanced with the nicest poise on that dactylic petal. Ah! a voracious and unmannerly little bummer of a minnow sees the delicious morsel, and makes a rapid dash to snatch it from my pet. "Good! good! Well done, my bonnie!" I did not see the slightest motion of that indignant flower-creature; yet assuredly there was a movement, and an effective one, too: for the zoophyte had shot one of its invisible shafts; and the ichthyic thief dashes off like one frantic with pain. Is he hurt? Likely. His is an urticated experience. He is stung in the snout! See how he seems to shake his nose! He fairly seems to sneeze again, and actually conducts himself much like a puppy that, uninvited, has put his nose into a bowl of hot soup. Ah, ha! He is rubbing his fishy proboscis against a frond of sea-lettuce. Perhaps the salad may cool his burning pain.

Mr. Fish soon recovers his equanimity of mind; and it is observable that his deference to Mrs. Actinia since that affair has been of a decidedly distant character.

But we return to mention certain organs attached to the free edges of the mesentery-walls, those perpendicular septæ, or membranous partitions, which we have taken some pains to describe. Says Nicholson: "Along the free margins of the mesenteries there also occur certain singular convoluted cords, charged with thread-cells, and termed 'craspeda,' the function of which is not yet understood. It



is believed, however, that the apertures, termed 'cinclides,' in the column-walls of some of the Actinidæ, are for the emission of the craspeda." Now, some observers say that they have seen these urticating phenomena take place from the side of the column of an actinia. Is it not, then, very likely that herein is the function of the craspeda? These "cinclides," or openings in the walls of the living column, are the portholes of the little tower, whence the "craspida"-like archers launch their invisible shafts.

That is an enviable experience when one is favored with the