They may be found in any small pools about the rocks which are flooded
by the tide at high water. Their favorite haunts, however, where they
occur in greatest quantity are more difficult to reach; but the
curious in such matters will be well rewarded, even at the risk of wet
feet and a slippery scramble over rocks covered with damp sea-weed, by
a glimpse into their more crowded abodes. Such a grotto is to be found
on the rocks of East Point at Nahant. It can only be reached at low
tide, and then one is obliged to creep on hands and knees to its
entrance, in order to see through its entire length; but its whole
interior is studded with these animals, and as they are of various
hues, pink, brown, orange, purple, or pure white, the effect is like
that of brightly colored mosaics set in the roof and walls. When the
sun strikes through from the opposite extremity of this grotto, which
is open at both ends, lighting up its living mosaic work, and showing
the play of the soft fringes wherever the animals are open, it would
be difficult to find any artificial grotto to compare with it in
beauty. There is another of the same kind on Saunders's Ledge, formed
by a large boulder resting on two rocky ledges, leaving a little cave
beneath, lined in the same way with variously colored sea-anemones, so
closely studded over its walls that the surface of the rock is
completely hidden. They are, however, to be found in larger or smaller
clusters, or scattered singly in any rocky fissures, overhung by
sea-weed, and accessible to the tide at high water.
The description of Polyp structure given above includes all the
general features of the sea-anemone; but for the better explanation of
the figures, it may not be amiss to recapitulate them here in their
special application. The body of the sea-anemone may be described as a
circular, gelatinous bag, the bottom of which is flat and slightly
spreading around the margin. (Fig. 2.) The upper edge of this bag
turns in so as to form a sac within a sac. (Fig. 6.) This inner sac,
_s_, is the stomach or digestive cavity, forming a simple open space
in the centre of the body, with an aperture in the bottom, _b_,
through which the food passes into the larger sac, in which it is
enclosed. But this outer and larger sac or main cavity of the body is
not, like the inner one, a simple open space. It is, on the contrary,
divided by vertical partitions into a number of distinct chambers,
converging from the periphery to the centre. These partitions do not
all advance so far as actually to join the wall of the digestive
cavity hanging in the centre of the body, but most of them stop a
little short of it, leaving thus a small, open space between the
chambers and the inner sac. (Fig. 1.) The eggs hang on the inner edge
of the partitions; when mature they drop into the main cavity, enter
the inner digestive cavity through its lower opening, and are passed
out through the mouth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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