Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/17

Rh of one of Nature's secrets. We recall one such made in 1858 or 1859. Though we at that time prepared an account for publication, yet it never saw the light. In order to refresh our memory, we to-day have taken from our desk this old manuscript, and given it a perusal. We had among our aquarian pets a fine fringed actinia, Metridium marginatum from Newport. To our glad surprise, we noticed one day that, as it adhered to the glass side of the tank, it was surrounded by a number of tiny young ones. The question was, where did they come from? That they came from the ova I had weighty reasons for doubting. So we set ourselves to find out, if possible. One day we were watching this anemone as it was gliding on the glass. Of course, the entire base was moving. But—no that is just where we at first were in error, for there was a little speck of its base that would not go along with the rest. There that little bit of the sucking-base stuck and held its place stubbornly. The great base kept at it—pulling, as it seemed, until a mere thread-like shred of matter connected the main mass and this little stubborn, speck-like remnant. And that connecting shred stretched like a thread of India-rubber. For nearly an entire day did this sort of thing continue, when at last the shred snapped, and the one part was drawn up into the base and the other part into the adhering speck or fragment. With our pocket-lens, we watched that tiny bit which had seceded from the body politic, or rather, from which the body politic had itself withdrawn. It soon gathered itself up into a plano-convex speck. The next day we observed a depression setting in at the convex point. In a day more we detected movement. It was dividing, and there was a pulling in two directions. This did not last over a day, and there were now two specks instead of one. In about three days, at top of each, five little tentacles appeared, and a tiny mouth. Wonderful to say, each was a young actinia. And



how strangely begotten, too! Sloughed off—actually exscinded from the base—a veritable bit of that dear old mother; not bone of her bone, since bones she had none; but verily flesh of her flesh. This was, indeed, to us a new sort of fission. How we did watch that pair of self-made twins! Very diminutive they were, truly; but very great pets for all that.