Let your Actiniæ stand for a day or two in the dish, and then, picking out the liveliest and handsomest, detach them once more from their hold, drop them into your vase, right them with a bit of stick, so that the sucking base is downwards, and leave them to themselves thenceforth.
These two species (Mesembryanthemum and Crassicornis) are quite beautiful enough to give a beginner amusement: but there are two others which are not uncommon, and of such exceeding loveliness, that it is worth while to take a little trouble to get them. The one is Dianthus, which I have already mentioned; the other Bellis, the sea-daisy, of which there is an excellent description and plates in Mr. Gosse’s “Rambles in Devon,” pp. 24 to 32.
It is common at Ilfracombe, and at Torquay; and indeed everywhere where there are cracks and small holes in limestone or slate rock. In these holes it fixes its base, and expands its delicate brown-grey star-like flowers on the surface: but it must be chipped out with hammer and chisel, at the expense of much dirt and patience; for the moment it is touched it contracts deep into the rock, and all that is left of the daisy flower, some two or three inches across, is a blue knot of half the size of a marble. But it will expand again, after a day or two of captivity, and will repay all the trouble which it has cost. Troglodytes may be found, as I have said already, in hundreds at Hastings, in similar situations to that of Bellis; its only token, when the tide is down, being a round dimple in the muddy sand which firs the lower cracks of rocks.
But you will want more than these anemones, both for your own amusement, and for the health of your tank. Microscopic animals will breed, and will also die; and you need for them some such scavenger as our poor friend Squinado, to whom you were introduced a few pages back. Turn, then, a few stones which lie piled on each other at extreme low-water mark, and five minutes’ search will give you the very animal you want,—a little crab, of a dingy russet above, and on the under side like smooth porcelain. His back is quite flat, and so are his large angular fringed claws, which, when he folds them up, lie in the same plane with his shell, and fit neatly into its edges. Compact little rogue that he is, made especially for sidling in and out of cracks and crannies, he carries with him such an apparatus of combs and brushes as Isidor or Floris never dreamed of; with which he sweeps out of the sea-water at every moment shoals of minute animalcules, and sucks them into his tiny mouth. Mr. Gosse will tell you more of this marvel, in his “Aquarium,” p. 48.