Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/236

Rh into an Aquarium, of which the Palæmones are tenants, in a very few minutes each of the latter will be found to have captured one of the elegant strangers, and to be greedily devouring it.

Here too we get the Scarlet-lined Æsop (Pandalus annulicornis), a Prawn of larger dimensions, sufficient to entitle it to a place at our tables. You would at first sight mistake it for the common Prawn (Palæmon serratus), but for the diagonal stripes of rich red that run along each side of its pellucid body. It is a handsome species, but as I have not observed any peculiarities of importance in its economy, I content myself with a figure of it, which will be found in Plate VI.

This species, (Actinia dianthus) is by far the largest and most magnificent of our native Anemones, though I think I could hardly call it, with Müller, "actiniarum pulcherrima," as it is excelled in beauty surely by A. crassicornis, and by several of the smaller species. It varies greatly in size, form (so far at least as this depends on extension or contraction), and colour. I have seen specimens in the same colony, doubtless a family group, one eighth of an inch in diameter, and others four inches. Dr. Johnston speaks of some five inches wide. Sometimes the same individual shrinks down to an abject flatness, and presently swells and rises into a noble massive column, from which the fringed disk expands and arches over on every side, reminding the beholder of a palm-tree. Then again, on some cause