Anonymous

“ Maurice Thompson asks in the September Scribner — "Is not the highest type of bird the completest animal, in point of physical equipoise and fitness for indefinite prolongation of individual life, that the world holds, man not excepted?" ”

“ During the popular furore for domestic aquaria, and the study of common objects of the sea-shore, "Granny," which had been in Edinburgh drawing-rooms since 1828, was recognized as the pioneer of the new movement in popular education. This Actinia Mesembryanthemum, sea anemone, or "animal flower" of older naturalists, was one of many whose rounded leathery forms, bright with rainbow irridescence in their native element, made them the chief ornaments of the glass vases of sea water in our drawing-rooms, though surrounded by algæ, prawns, shrimps, and periwinkles. ”

“ But actinias have been known to exert great muscular power, and show high possibilities of recuperation. Thus Dr Johnson, of Berwick, saw one whose skin had been cut through by a shell fish it had swallowed, but which outgrew the injury. Then Mr C. Peach has observed actinias spurt out periwinkles, limpets, &c. from their central stomach when they had assimilated the fleshy contents. May not, then, our actinia have come to a premature death through its living for sixty years in civilisation? What brief lives domestic animals have compared with their savage kindreds! ”