Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/123

82 Actinia bellis in this situation is externally of a dull wainscot-yellow hue, paler towards the base, which is usually buried in the mud. The disk is blackish brown, freckled with grey and white spots, and the tentacles are similarly coloured. In other particulars as of form, arrangement and number of the tentacles, &c, it agrees with the normal state of the species; but the body is thicker in proportion to the disk, which has not the same tendency to assume the appearance of a shallow cup.

This was not the first occasion on which I had met with this variety of the Daisy Actinia. A few days before this I had taken a run up the inlet called the Backwater, and had seen, towards the upper end, in the shallows of the western side, a great number of dull yellow objects scattered over the mud of the bottom. You would suppose them to be pebbles, but on taking one up, which you may easily do with your hand, if you are in one of those little flat-bottomed skiffs that are here called troughs, but at Poole bear the appellation of canoes,—you perceive that you have captured an Actinia. The soft, slimy, fetid mud affords no proper surface for adhesion; and hence the Anemones can scarcely be said to adhere in the manner of the genus, but simply to rest on their basal disk. This, however, is not owing to any defect in the power of adhesion, for on being removed into a vessel of sea water, they are soon found clung fast to the bottom and sides.

In one case I observed the interior of the stomach protruded from the mouth, in the form of two flat corrugated semicircular lobes of a greyish hue, that