with tranquil fortitude, and seldom allows many hours to elapse ere it settles quietly down in some shady corner, if practicable, plumes out its snaky locks, and enjoys the good that is left to it. The placidity of its temper is also manifested in the temperate use of its acontia, or missiles of defence, those tiny white threads—barbed ecthorea—that are coiled up in different chambers—cnidea—of the body, of all classes of Sagartia Anemone, and form such powerful weapons of defence to those who attack or annoy them. My Viduata is not erratic in disposition; for some four months it remained quietly domiciled in a snug corner of its new home without evincing the slightest curiosity to learn anything of its capabilities or its inhabitants beyond what was seemly to its own comfort and dignity; elevating himself sufficiently to dress and expand his flexuous tentacula, or under the shade of semi darkness elongating its slender column some two inches and a half high, and with a modest graceful bend glancing at the world around him. But if silent, our Viduata is without doubt a keen observer; and with a laudable curiosity and that friendliness and sociability that is instinctively characteristic, one morning,—after partaking of a somewhat voracious meal of raw minced mussel, served to him as a Chinaman takes his rice, bit by bit, from the end of a chop-stick, and conveyed by him to his brown lined, wide open mouth, with one of his flexile tentacles, as an elephant conveys food to his mouth by the use of his trunk—was found settled in a new residence, in close proximity to some tiny yellow cup corals (Balanophyllia Regia) and again beside a noble colony of his much-loved Dianthus.
Here where “old faces glimmered through the door, old footsteps trod the upper floors,” invigorated twice a week by, I must own, voracious meals, Viduata lived a pleasant summer life; but as winter approached there had evidently been a midnight conclave and a moonlit flitting, for one morning a new flat-surfaced rock that stood in the centre of the tank was in the firm possession of Viduata, along with a handsome Plumose and two fairy elves of Sphyrodita Sagarts, and there they are now, our Viduata leading a calm, undisturbed life, now and then taking a fit of indolence and sinking down into an apathetic flatness, which none other of the Sagarts can surpass or equal, but whether instinct guides him or the sense of his olfactory nerves arouses him, it is for a naturalist to declare; for place a small piece of mussel on the closed aperture of its body, and after a moment or so, up rises the column, out come the tentacles, and agape goes the mouth like a young fledgling.
ACTINOLOBA DIANTHUS, THE PLUMOSE ANEMONE.
Many years ago, in one of the colonies, when taking luncheon on board an American man-of-war, a young Yankee officer, after amusing me by a multitude of questions about England and the English, exclaimed suddenly:
“Well! you tell me that people would not take off their hats in the streets to a nobleman without they knew something of him personally. I guess I should take off my hat to the Queen of England or the Duke of Wellington if I met them.”
This involuntary republican feeling of respect for excellence and worth ever recurs to me as I watch the queenly Dianthus. Elastic and firm in consistency, with a graceful, smooth, circular column, frequently semi-transparently streaked, capped by a fosse and a membranous frilling of tentacula, and clothed in sumptuous silky hues of pink, creamy white, or translucent neutral-tinted buff, dark grey, olive, or white, the Diver in the Gulf of Charybdis (of Schiller) never brought up a fairer gem. Whether drawn up to its full height, displaying its tentacles dotted on a frilling, and giving a Queen Elizabeth ruff, all puckers and bows—floating with stately grace, its plumosy tentacles for sails, Nautilus fashion—moored to a rock, its column bending gracefully, “queen lily and rose in one;” or with a diadem of marabouts spread out around the fosse—that order of beauty and birth peculiar only to the Actinoloba Dianthus encircling it like a ring, and, by forming a division between the column and the physiognomy—if I may be allowed the expression—proclaiming it fully thereby queen of sea anemones.
The young Dianthus, with the sympathy and love of a tender nature, at once opens and expands to true friendship, and sheds the radiance of its charms and beauty on a new world around him; but, dignified and placid as is the general temperament of this queen of Actinia, those of mature growth, like many beings gifted with reasoning powers, cannot at once submit to a reverse of fortune with that resignation and fortitude which betokens the true nobility of birth and breeding; and frequently many hours elapse after its removal from its ocean home and a senseless cone bestrewed by thready flags of distress (acontia) alone tells of our queen of the castle. But, with “self-renunciation life begins,” thinks the noble anemone, as she slowly rises like a mermaid from the deep, and spreads out her golden hair, glancing proudly but benignantly around her, dining or breakfasting, as the case may be, with luxurious comfort but not voracious appetite, and appearing, later in the day, in the transparent silken robes and courtly plumes that betoken her birth and race—a tribute of gratitude which all the Sagartian Anemones render for their food, most of them appearing in their best and loveliest robes and forms after a hearty meal.
Shall I say that my Plumose loves with passionate strength? For, if slow in making new friendships, like the true and warm hearted, it puts forth all its best energies with sterling reality when once it does become attached, suffering its very fibres to be torn and lacerated ere it can wrench itself away, or be persuaded to move, when necessity requires a change of scene or position. And, like one whose life has not been in vain, and being “dead yet speaketh,” the bit of fibre left behind buds and expands, and, after a few days, a miniature Plumose delights us with its saucy, feathery face, begins to eat and grow apace, and daily tells us of her who was once there. Slow to anger, and consequently sparing in the use of its acontia, and dearly loving the society of its own kith and kin and a few select and chosen