Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/87

Rh usually after a storm, it is a flat-looking, smooth mass, of a brown tint, delicately striped with yellow and white. After a few days’ residence in the tank, it begins to expand, and rises to so tall a figure, especially in the twilight, that it appears quite a different creature to that introduced a few days before. In fact, its actual bulk is increased vastly by expansion. It is constantly expanded.

A. Bellis is another good species. It is a delicate pink and brown and pink and white anemone, and certainly does resemble a daisy very closely indeed. Though much prized it is not rare. Mr. Lloyd usually has abundance of them on sale, at a shilling each, and a few should be used to give variety to the collection. In newly-made marine-water it will not do at all; but if it falls into the possession of an aquarian who has no ripe tank at hand for it, it may be kept for weeks in a shallow pan.

If anything goes wrong with this kind, it throws out a number of white threads, and shrinks out of form, and perishes in a few days; but once obtained in a sound state, and carefully treated at the outset, it is as hardy as mesembryanthemum, and more readily expanded at all seasons than most of its compeers.

Actinia Gemmacea.—This is a delicately-constituted anemone, that displays itself freely only in the most pure sea-water, in which there is abundance of oxygen. It is quite unfit for early experiments, but well repays the trouble it occasions when it can be successfully kept. A few weeks since I had the pleasure of witnessing the birth of a large cluster of this pretty anemone in the extensive collection of Mr. Lloyd, at Portland Road. To the