Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/18

8 These young actinia very rapidly increased in size, and soon had doubled the number of their feelers. Supposing that this argued an increase of feeling on their part, we found ourselves feeling an increase of interest in their ways and welfare. Just as this mutual understanding had been established, an incident occurred which filled us with anxiety. The mother-actinia began gliding back toward our little ones. That firmly-adhering base, sticking fast as the boy's sucker with which he lifts a brick, came slowly but surely, advancing toward her children. On, and on, now she is right upon them! Good-by, my twin babies, it is all-day with you now! That sucker of a mother has taken you in beyond all hope of redemption. How we did wish that that cruel parent would move on and let us see our pets again, even if dead! But no, now she would not move at all; and for nearly a day she retained that position. At length we detected movement—the gliding had begun. But, oh, how provokingly slow it was! Ah! we begin to see them at the peripheral edge of that mother's base. How flat the poor things look! No wonder, such a squeezing maternal embrace as that was. They are fairly out now—dead! dead! See, their little tentacles are protruding. It looks as if they were in a hurry to shake out their crumpled frills. Well, well, they have come out of this singular occultation as brilliantly as ever emerged a binary star.

The question whether these beautiful creatures have a nervous system seems not settled. That they manifest phenomena indicating a will, cannot be doubted. On one occasion my pets were all sulky, like "Jack in the doldrums." Every one was closed, which means it had shriveled up into a mere gelatinous lump. Each one in this condition had a disgusting look, resembling nothing so truthfully as a



ripened boil when the fetid core is ready for extraction. And we have often seen even this repulsiveness intensified, by evolving in threads a white, stringy slime, that peculiar mucous lining of which, in parts at least, the creature often takes occasion to divest itself when in repose. (See cut of Fringed Actinia closed.)

As above, when in repose, these sea-anemones look like clots of gelatine, and, as many of the actinia are very small, we have known