But the ocean also has its large radiate anemones, whose lustrous petals, still more wonderful than those of the land, for they are endowed with animal life, form the chief ornament of the crystal tide-pools, or of the sheltered basins of our rock-bound shores. More than twenty species of these marine flowers, many of them displaying a gorgeous wreath of richly coloured tentacles, are denizens of the British waters; but the finest and largest are found along the margin of the equatorial ocean, where they occasionally measure a foot in diameter. Their tints are as various as the arrangement of their prehensile crown; fiery red and apple-green, yellow and white as driven snow. Sometimes the tentacles form a gorgon's head of long thick worms, clothed in satin and velvet, and sometimes a thicket of delicate filaments. Nothing seems more inoffensive than a sea-anemone expanding its disc in the tranquil waters, but woe to the wandering annelide, to the shrimp, or whelk, or nimble entomostracon, that comes within reach of its urticating tentacles, for, plunged into a fatal lethargy, it is soon hurried to the gaping mouth of its voracious enemy, ever ready to engulf it in a living tomb. The morsel thus swallowed is retained in the stomach for ten or twelve hours, when the undigested remains are regurgitated, enveloped in a glairy fluid, not unlike the white of an egg. The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. Thus Dr. Johnstone mentions a specimen of _Actinia crassicornis_, that might have been originally two inches in diameter, and that had somehow contrived to swallow a scallop-valve of the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell fixed within the stomach was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and the mouth was of course prevented; yet instead of emaciating and dying of an atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident to increase its enjoyments and chances of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened upon what had been the base, and led to the under stomach; the individual had indeed become a sort of Siamese twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions.