Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/244

Rh The principal object in the accompanying Plate, is an expanded specimen of the Plumose Anemone (Actinia dianthus) of the white variety, attached to an oyster-shell. In the front is a group of Serpula contortuplicata, with their cork-like opercula protruded, and their scarlet fans expanded. They are seated on a Scallop (Pecten opercularis); from which also springs a frond of the exquisitely delicate Nitophyllum punctatum. Behind the Anemone are tufts of the Sea-grass (Zostera marina)

On the 17th of September, I took this little Mollusk by hundreds on the Zostera left dry at low spring-tide, below Sandsfoot Castle. In raking the edges of the grass in the shallow pools with a ring-net, the little black shining Nudibranchs were left on the cloth. Some were of much larger size than mentioned by Forbes and Hanley, being fully a quarter of an inch long when crawling, while others were of various degrees of minuteness, down to half a line. When contracted, out of water, they presented a close resemblance to a glossy beetle, a Gyrinus for example, but in crawling the body was considerably elongated.

In the Aquarium they are fond of crawling up the side perpendicularly till they reach the surface, when they float back-downward, or more generally let go, bend in the foot, and drop at once to the bottom.

Beneath a large flat stone, exposed at extreme low water, at the extremity of one of the low rough ledges