off little bits much more easily from a piece that was held firmly by the anemone than from one that was lying loose upon the ground, and this may have caused it to do intentionally what was at first done by chance. But the sea-anemone, suffering no harm from the fish--indeed, its association of ideas, if I may use the expression, must rather have been little fishes and unexpected food--had no cause to shoot its microscopic arrows at it, and did not do so even when the fish concealed itself among the tentacles. This latter habit on the part of the fish would be developed into an instinct through natural selection, since the individuals that most frequently exhibited it would be the best protected, and therefore, on an average, the most likely to survive. Whether the benevolent attitude of the anemone towards the fish is to be regarded as the expression of an instinct is open to dispute, for it is quite conceivable that each individual sea-anemone is disposed to gentleness by the behaviour of the fish, and so the development of a special hereditary instinct was unnecessary, because without it each anemone reacted in the manner most likely to secure its own advantage[7]. [7] Since the above was written Plate has observed several similar cases in the Red Sea. A little fish lives along with the anemone, _Crambactis aurantiaca_, a foot in size, and not only conceals itself among its tentacles, but remains among them when the anemone draws them in. These fishes, therefore, must be immune against the stinging-cells of the sea-anemone; and in the same way another species of fish appears to be immune from the strong poison secreted by sea-urchins of the genus _Diadema_ from the points of their spines, among which the fishes live. This relation certainly seems more like a one-sided adaptation on the part of the fishes than a true symbiosis, but in the cases observed by Sluiter the return service of the fishes seems to be regularly rendered. Here, as everywhere else in nature, there are transition stages, and a one-sided protective relation may gradually, under favourable circumstances, be transformed into a symbiosis. The same may be true of the fish as far as laying its booty in the mouth of the anemone is concerned; there may be no inherited instinct in this; it may be an intelligent action, which is learnt anew in the lifetime of each individual.