along with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and using the tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur asserts, and as I have once witnessed; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, so as to render it more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are driven to a distance by the random motion of the waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and on very many species of shelled mollusca, and probably on all animals brought within their reach whose strength or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the grasp of their numerous tentacula.... The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. I had once brought me a specimen of _Actinia crassicornis_ that might have been originally two inches in diameter, which had somehow contrived to swallow a valve of _Pecten maximus_ 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 atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident to increase its enjoyment and its chance of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened up on 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.” The Actinia are at once gluttonous and voracious. They seize even mussels and crabs, and when they want to eject the hardest parts of the latter can turn their stomachs inside out, as one might turn out one’s pocket! Their tentacles can act on the offensive; the hand of the man who has touched them becomes inflamed, and small fish are literally killed by contact with them. In Provence, Italy, and Greece, some varieties are used for food, the Green Actinia being in special repute. [Illustration: SEA‐ANEMONES. 1. _Actinoloba dianthus_. 2. _Cereus gemmaceus_. 3. _Actinia bicolor_. 4. _Sagartia viduata_. 5. _Cereus papillossus_. 6. _Actinia picta_. 7. _Actinia equina_. 8. _Sagartia rosea_. 9. _Sagartia coccinea_.] The Gorgons are interesting curiosities of the coral type; some are scarcely the twelfth of an inch in height, while others attain a height of several feet. The beautiful Fan Gorgon, which is often eighteen or more inches high, is so called on account of its form, and there are other very beautiful examples of arborescent gorgons. Their organism is double; the one external, sometimes gelatinous; sometimes, on the contrary, fleshy and cretaceous. It is animated with life.