out, the anemone caring only for the blood, of which it has sucked the body dry.

7. Searching further among the rocks, especially under the seaweed, many other species of these soft, fleshy-bodied anemones may be found. They have different tints, but are mostly brown, or livercolored, when they are closed up.

8. Presently, however, the splendid flowerlike top may be seen to unfold itself. Stooping down, this expanded blossom may then be touched with the finger. At once the petals begin to close, the finger is seized, and is held not by pressure only, but by a sticky fluid as well.

9. After feeling this, no one will wonder that a wandering crab or a luckless shellfish should sometimes fail to escape from this pretty-looking but devouring monster, whose big stomach is so near his ever-ready mouth. An anemone will take in a scallop, shell and all; the next day the undigested remains of the shell will be ejected by the mouth.

1. But there is something even still more wonderful to be told of sea anemones. If one of these strange monsters be cut down the middle into two separate parts, each half will reproduce what it has lost, and there will be two anemones instead of one.

2. Or if an anemone be cut across, the upper part will continue to take food into its mouth, although it has no stomach to put it in; and each of these separate portions will in time become complete and whole ones.

3. This is the way the creature heals itself when a portion of its body gets torn away from the rock - a fragment becomes a whole being. But as a rule anemones increase in another way; the mouth of the old one opens, and out of it come forth a number of young ones, each not larger than a pin's head.

4. There are many kinds of sea anemones.

One, the green opelet, is emerald green, with nearly two hundred long, rounded rays, each beautifully tipped with pink, ever on the move and always expanded. This one is fond of swimming, and can rise to the surface of the water by filling itself with air till it is like a bladder.

5. The gold-spangled anemone has a bright pea-green coat covered with golden spots; its rays are transparent, with green bars across them.

6. The parasitic anemone is a great drab-colored specimen with creamy and purplish rays, and is fond of fastening itself on to a whelk shell which has a hermit crab living inside. Sea anemones are creatures as beautiful as they are curious.

1. As the land has its wealth of flowers to adorn its meadows and fringe its forest paths, or cluster among the crevices of the bold gray rocks that wall the mountain side; so the ocean has its gardens of gayly blooming life. But this sea-life is a step above the plant-life that adds beauty to