Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

Now for the live stock. In the crannies of every rock you will find sea-anemones (Actiniæ); and a dozen of these only will be enough to convert your little vase into the most brilliant of living flower-gardens. There they hang upon the under side of the ledges, apparently mere rounded lumps of jelly: one is of dark purple dotted with green; another of a rich chocolate; another of a delicate olive; another sienna-yellow; another all but white. Take them from their rock; you can do it easily by slipping under them your finger-nail, or the edge of a pewter spoon. Take care to tear the sucking base as little as possible (though a small rent they will darn for themselves in a few days, easily enough), and drop them into a basket of wet sea-weed; when you get home turn them into a dish full of water and leave them for the night, and go to look at them to-morrow. What a change! The dull lumps of jelly have taken root and flowered during the night, and your dish is filled from side to side with a bouquet of chrysanthemums; each has expanded into a hundred-petalled flower, crimson, pink, purple, or orange; touch one, and it shrinks together like a sensitive plant, displaying at the root of the petals a ring of brilliant turquoise beads.