c, Anthea cereus. The tentacles are pale apple-green in colour, tipped with mauve, and cannot be completely retracted.
d, Actinia mesembryanthemum. The disk of tentacles is completely retracted. This is the commonest sea-anemone on our South Coast, and is usually maroon colour, but often is spotted like a strawberry.]
There are four kinds of sea-anemones which are abundant on our coast. They adhere by a disk-like base to the rocks and large stones, and have the power of swelling themselves out with sea-water (as have many soft-bodied creatures of this kind), with all their tentacles expanded. They have, in that condition, the shape of small "Martello" towers, with their adhesive disk below and the mouth-bearing platform above, fringed by tapering fingers; and they can, on the other hand, shrink to a fifth part of their expanded volume, drawing in and concealing their tentacles, which are in some kinds perforated at the tip. One common on the rocks at Shanklin and other parts of our South Coast, but not on the East Coast, has very abundant, long, pale green tentacles, which are tipped with a brilliant peach colour, and it is peculiar in not being able to retract or conceal this beautiful crown of snake-like locks, reminding one of the Gorgon Medusa. It is known as Anthea cereus (Fig. 6, c). Many of them are known by the name "Actinia," and the commonest of all (Fig. 6, d) is called "Actinia mesembryanthemum," because of its resemblance to a fleshy-leaved flower of that name which grows on garden rockeries--sometimes called the "ice-plant." This one is of a deep maroon colour, rarely more than an inch and a half across the disk. The adhesive disk is often edged with bright blue, and small spherical tentacles, of a bright blue colour, are set at intervals outside the fringe of longer red ones. This anemone lives wonderfully well in a small glass basin or in an aquarium holding a gallon of sea-water, which is kept duly aerated by squirting it daily. One lived in Edinburgh for more than fifty years, in the possession first of Sir John Dalyell, and then of Mr. Peach. She was known as "Granny," and produced many hundreds of young in the course of years. This species is viviparous, the young issuing from the parent's mouth as tiny fully-formed sea-anemones, which immediately fix themselves by their disks to the glass wall of their habitation. Anemones kept thus in small aquaria have to be carefully fed; bits of the sea mussel (of course, uncooked) are the best food for them. This and many other kinds are not absolutely stationary, but can very slowly crawl by means of muscular movements of the adhesive disk. There are kinds of sea-anemones known which spend their lives floating in the ocean; they are thin and flat. Others adhere to the shells of hermit crabs and even to the big claws of some crabs, and profit by the "crumbs" of food let fall by the nippers of their host. A very handsome and large sea-anemone is common on the East Coast, and is known as "crassicornis" (its generic name is Bunodes). When distended it measures as much as 4 inches across (Fig. 6, b). I have one at this moment before me, expanded in a bowl of sea-water. The tentacles are pale green or grey, banded with deep red, and the body is blotched with irregular patches of red, green, and orange. It attaches fine pebbles and bits of shell to the surface of the body.