that it opens at the lower end into a cavity of the
body, and all the digested matter, converted into nourishment, is thus
distributed through the rest of the body. That is the general structure
of one of these sea anemones. If you touch it it contracts immediately
into a heap. It looks at first quite like a flower in the sea, but if
you touch it you find that it exhibits all the peculiarities of a living
animal; and if anything which can serve as its prey comes near its
tentacles, it closes them round it and sucks the material into its
stomach and there digests it and turns it to the account of its own
body.
These creatures are very voracious, and not at all particular what they
seize; and sometimes it may be that they lay hold of a shellfish which
is far too big to be packed into that interior cavity, and, of course,
in any ordinary animal a proceeding of this kind would give rise to a
very severe fit of indigestion. But this is by no means the case in the
sea anemone, because when digestive difficulties of this kind arise he
gets out of them by splitting himself in two; and then each half builds
itself up into a fresh creature, and you have two polypes where there
was previously one, and the bone which stuck in the way lying between
them! Not only can these creatures multiply in this fashion, but they
can multiply by buds. A bud will grow out of the side of the body (I am
not speaking of the common sea anemone, but of allied creatures) just
like the bud of a plant, and that will fashion itself into a creature
just like the parent. There are some of them in which these buds remain
connected together, and you will soon see what would be the result of
that. If I make a bud grow out here, and another on the opposite side,
and each fashions itself into a new polype, the practical effect will be
that before long you will see a single polype converted into a sort of
tree or bush of polypes. And these will all remain associated together,
like a kind of co-operative store, which is a thing I believe you
understand very well here,--each mouth will help to feed the body and
each part of the body help to support the multifarious mouths. I think
that is as good an example of a zoological co-operative store as you can
well have. Such are these wonderful creatures. But they are capable not
only of multiplying in this way, but in other ways, by having a more
ordinary and regular kind of offspring. Little eggs are hatched and the
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