Sanborn Tenney

“ If an observer be on a rocky shore he will not fail to become interested in the "sea-anemones," those "flowers of the sea" which at first view appear to be on the border-land between plants and animals, so that one hardly knows whether to refer them to the vegetable or to the animal kingdom. ”

“ It is not an uncommon thing for the traveler on the Pacific Railway to see several of these beautiful animals while he is crossing the Plains. One has been seen to run along for a mile or two parallel with the moving train, as if determined to keep up with it. Its speed is very great, and is only equaled by that of the fleetest of the deer; and hence it is almost useless to pursue it. It is not, however, difficult to secure these animals. They have great curiosity in regard to any objects which they are not accustomed to. The hunters well know this fact, and turn it to their own advantage. ”

“ As sea-urchins do not shed the shell, as do crabs and lobsters, the inquiring mind will naturally ask how the animal can continue to enlarge when once it is invested with a hard shell. The answer is, that every piece of the shell grows at the same time, and in this way the whole shell enlarges together, and in a perfectly symmetrical manner.
As already indicated, the sea-urchin moves by means of its locomotive suckers. Extending these beyond the spines, it lays hold of the surface of the rock or sea-weed, and then, contracting the suckers, pulls itself along. ”

“ It was the remark of one of the old students of Nature that there was nothing on the land that has not its counterpart in the sea. And, if we recall some of the names that have been given to marine forms, we shall see how men have been struck with the resemblances between animals of the land and those of the water. ”

“ The sea-anemones are wholly soft; they secrete no skeleton, or only the merest particles of hard matter. On the other hand, the coral-producing polyps secrete a stony skeleton. The old notion that coral is something built by an insect is entirely erroneous. The coral-producing animal is in no sense an insect, nor does it toil to build the clusters and reefs of coral which it forms. The coral-polyp lives and eats, and the getting of its food is the only labor of its life. ”

“ If we imagine the sea-cucumber to be placed with its mouth downward and the tentacles to be replaced with teeth, the long body to be shortened upon itself so as to assume nearly the form of a hemisphere, and the microscopic calcareous particles to be enlarged so that they should touch one another, then we should have essentially the form and structure of the sea-urchin. ”

“ Or suppose we accept the doctrine of evolution and natural selection—does that, when we come right down to the facts as revealed in these 15,000 forms of fishes and all other organic forms, solve all the difficulties for us, or enable us to solve them? Does evolution alone enable us to account for the wonderful diversity of form, to say nothing of the scarcely less wonderful diversity of size, among these numerous vertebrates—especially when we remember that thousands of the most diverse forms have always been under essentially the same physical conditions? ”

“ Although some sea-anemones live in the sand (Fig. 2) , the home of the ordinary kinds is the pools and caverns among the rocks; here we may find and study them when the tide is out. Groups, sometimes in thousands, and standing so closely together that they cover the whole interior of the rocky cavern or grotto, are not uncommon. Some are expanded to their fullest extent, like a full-blown flower; others are only partly open; others are just opening; and others still are closed as tightly as the bud of a flower, which they more or less resemble. ”

“ In the centre of the top there is an opening or mouth, which leads directly into a central sac or stomach, and around the mouth are rows of long and delicate hollow appendages, which the animal moves freely to and fro in the water, and with which it can bring the food to its mouth. As soon as a snail or other small animal falls among the fringes, these close around it and move it toward the mouth, where it is soon swallowed, the soft parts digested and the hard parts excluded. ”

“ The Rocky-Mountain sheep lives in flocks, and is exceedingly wild, especially in regions that have been frequented by the hunters; and he who would get a shot at one of these animals has often to make wide détours, and always to proceed with the greatest caution. The flesh of this animal is very highly prized, being regarded by some as even better than venison, or ordinary mutton. The hunters tell remarkable stories of the big-horn. ”

“ The female produces her young in May; at the first birth there is only one fawn, but afterward two, and it is believed by the hunters that these twins are always one male and one female. The moose is hunted at the yards, and also pursued with dogs until it is fatigued and overtaken; and it is also shot on the lake-shores and river-margins, in the early autumn, by moonlight. The flesh of the moose, though rather coarse, is highly prized as food by many, and is a very good substitute for beef. The nose and the tongue are regarded as great delicacies. ”

“ Sea-anemones have no proper nervous system. The sense of touch is distributed throughout the whole animal. It will, therefore, appear as a remarkable statement that some kinds have quite definitely-formed eyes. These are seen in some tropical species just outside of the tentacles, and according to Dana each of these eyes has a crystalline lens and an optic nerve!
Sea-anemones readily reproduce lost parts. If one is quickly torn from a rock, parts of the foot remain attached to the rock, and in many cases each portion thus left will become a perfect sea-anemone! ”

“ As all of our domestic sheep and cattle have come from wild species, so in the future we are to draw from the same sources some of the most valuable grazing animals that are to stock the pastures and farmyards of the great farming-regions of this vast country. And we have several kinds of these animals now wild on the plains and in the forests that ought to be added to our domestic flocks and herds ”

“ If the collector reach down into the water the full length of his arm, and move his hand over the bottom among the sea-weeds, he will not be long in finding a sea-urchin. He will know when he touches one, as the sharp spines stand out on every side. Without moving from his position the collector will often secure a score or more of fine living specimens—some hardly exceeding a fraction of an inch in diameter, and others two inches or more; for he will find them of different ages, even if not of different species. ”

“ Enemies are constantly on their track. Man hunts them for their valuable skin and for their flesh. Vast numbers are killed yearly that civilized man may feed upon their tongues. Wolves and bears lurk in ambush to snatch away the young, and more openly to wage a constant warfare against the sick and disabled members of the herd. So that, notwithstanding their vast numbers, the day is not far distant when the buffalo will be as rare a sight on the Plains as the wapiti and the moose are now in our Northern forests. ”

“ And if the serpent-star had its mouth placed upward, its arms multiplied by branching, and its ab·oral region elongated into a stem, we should have the plant-like form of the crinoid.
And so it is in all parts of the material world. Nature has but comparatively few great types, but the forms included under these types are almost endlessly varied. Unity in diversity is a great law which prevails not only in the animal kingdom, but throughout the whole realm of Nature. ”

“ Starfishes are very voracious, and feed mainly on mollusks. They are exceedingly destructive to oysters in many places, and thus come in direct competition with man for the possession of this delicious bivalve. Instead of swallowing their food as other animals do, they turn the stomach out of the mouth and over the animal which they wish to devour! ”

“ Many visitors to the sea-shore come away without seeing a single living brittle-star, because the curious echinoderms which bear this name hide under the sea-weeds, and in the dark holes and crevices among the rocks, and are, therefore, found only by those who search carefully for them. ”

“ This animal once inhabited nearly all of North America, except the cold regions of the north; but it is now confined mainly to the great Western plains, where, notwithstanding the immense havoc made among their numbers, both by Indians and white men, they still exist in numbers that almost defy computation, in some places covering the plains in every direction as far as the eye can reach. ”

“ There are many other fishes that depart so much from the ordinary forms that the common fisherman instinctively names them after some land-animals. The sea-wolf or wolf-fish is one of these, although its head is more like that of a wild-cat or a lynx than it is like that of a wolf. ”

“ The beginner may look into a clear pool where there are a hundred sea-urchins, and perhaps he will not see one until he has looked for some minutes; for sea-urchins not only resemble some of the sea-weeds in their color, but by means of their locomotive suckers they draw the sea-weeds closely about them, in many cases completely concealing themselves. ”

“ On various parts of the sea-anemones, and of all other polyps, especially on their tentacles or fringes, there are very remarkable objects called cnidæ, or lasso-cells, like those on jellyfishes, each cell being less than one two-hundredths of an inch in length. In each there is a long, slender, coiled, and wonderfully-constructed thread, which can be instantly darted forth, paralyzing any little animal which it strikes ”

“ Of sheep there is only one wild species in North America, the Rocky-Mountain sheep, or big-horn (Ovis montana, Fig. 7) . This animal is of a much larger size than the ordinary domestic sheep, and its horns are of enormous size. A large animal of this species weighs about three hundred pounds. In Siberia there is a wild-sheep, called the argali, which Cuvier believed to be the same as our big-horn. It is certainly very remarkable that there should be only one species ”

“ Their respiratory apparatus is very peculiar, being composed of seven pouches on each side, which receive water from the lateral openings of a canal distinct from the œsophagus, and discharge the same through seven branchial openings on each side of the neck; and their mouth and tongue are more strange than their breathing apparatus." The mouth is round, and the tongue moves forward and backward in it like a piston, thus enabling the animal to produce a vacuum to fix itself firmly to a stone or any other body in the water. ”

“ AMONG the thousands who visit the sea-shore in summer, there are many who, although not naturalists, are more or less interested in the various marine forms which there abound, and perhaps a brief notice of some of these forms will be acceptable to those who have not made a special study of life as it is revealed in the sea. ”

“ This animal is in some respects so much like a sheep, and in others so much like an ox, that naturalists have named its genus Ovibos, the first part of the word meaning sheep, and the latter part meaning ox. The musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) inhabits the barren ground of North America, and is about the size of a two-years-old heifer. Its horns are close together on the top of the head, whence they curve outward, down-ward, and thence upward. The body is covered with long pendent hair, and the color is brownish-black. ”

“ The shell, which is composed of hundreds of pieces, presents a very beautiful sight when the spines are removed. It is made up of ten segments, radiating from the mouth, and converging to a central region on the top (Fig. 27) . Every alternate segment is perforated for the numerous locomotive suckers to pass out, the intermediate segments being imperforate, and more prominently marked with tubercles, on which spines are borne. At the termination of the five perforated segments there is a triangular plate with a minute opening; here the eye is situated. ”

“ The musk-ox lives mostly in herds of a score or more, and, contrary to what we would naturally suppose, it runs with great speed, and climbs rocky hills with facility. The flesh of the young animals is very good, but that of the older ones is too strongly impregnated with musk to be palatable to white men, although the Indians and Esquimaux may not seriously object to it. ”

“ The buffalo is as large as a good-sized domestic ox, and has a large head which is carried close to the ground, a broad forehead, a broad, full chest, a large hump between the shoulders, narrow loins, and rather slender legs. The horns are set far apart, are large at the base, and taper suddenly to a sharp point. The buffalo is covered with a thick coat of hair, that upon the head, neck, and shoulders, being very long and shaggy. The horns and hoofs are black. ”

“ The moose (Alce Americanus, Fig. 1) is the largest member of the deer family, equaling a good-sized horse in bulk, and having very long legs; and the male has very long and broad antlers, which in some instances weigh as much as seventy pounds or more. Its muzzle is exceedingly large and long, its ears long and hairy, its neck short and thick, and the latter and the shoulders covered by a mane, and the throat with long hair. The general color is a grayish brown, and the hair is very coarse and brittle. ”