Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Sagartia anemones, or My drawing-room pets
SAGARTIA ANEMONES, OR MY DRAWING-ROOM PETS.
“Unheard by them the roaring of the wind,
The elastic motion of the waves unfelt,
Still, life is theirs, well suited to themselves.”
“Rien n’est plus commun que les bonnes choses; il n’est question que de les discerner, et il est certain qu’elles sont toutes naturelles et à notre portée, et même connues de toute le monde.”
Thanks to Gosse, who tells us “the Sea Anemone is an indubitable animal, and its organisation more complex than is usually supposed,” and to other men of science of our day, Marine Zoology rises year by year like a growing child, and in the microcosms of our rock pools, nestling rocks, and sandy nooks, we find that life there has its pleasures and its pains, and that there are beings, who, in spite of having once puzzled writers whether to consider them “as a superior rank of vegetables or the humblest order of the animated tribe,” are replete with vivacity and animation, sensible of the summer sunlight and the winter cold, and day by day developing to our minds the fact that they have instincts, will, and disposition, as full of interest and amusement as their forms delight us, each in its own kind by their beauty, their varying hues, and their peculiar and most wondrous construction.
When we hear of the “Beadlet Actinia,” who displayed its velvety robe and blue turquoises in an aquarium for twenty years, how utterly insignificant sounds the tale we tell, in an experience that boasts of little more than a year; but each day might have been a month, such a source of occupation and pleasure has it afforded me to foster and watch the lovely inhabitants of my two or three glass vases—Aquaria. Each individual is endeared to me by association, whether coaxed and petted from its home in the depth of a glassy pool, “from its snug arm-chair,” in its native lime or sandstone, from some niche in the overhanging or perpendicular rocks, “or on the surf-beaten sands that encircle it around.”
SAGARTIA VIDUATA, THE SNAKE-LOCKED ANEMONE.
The oldest, and to me the most attractive of my pets, is a beautiful Sagartia Viduata, a slim, graceful shaded drab column, warmer in the tint as it rises higher, and carefully striped longitudinally with lighter hues; a fancifully pencilled greyish-tinted disc, with a distinct white mark at the corners of the mouth, and five rows of the purest translucent greyish-blue-tinted tentacula and viola. The substance of the Viduata is of a leathery construction and its constitution apparently like most creatures well formed and healthy, fully adapted to battle with the storms of life; and agreeing with the poet “that sure there is need of social intercourse . . . . . in a world that seems to toll the death-blow of its decease, and by the voice of all its elements to preach the general doom,” the Viduata is seldom found alone. It is somewhat select, however, in the choice of its companions, and found most frequently on terms of the greatest intimacy with the queenly Actinoloba Dianthus Anemone, whether pendent side by side with it, and like it revelling in a crystal drop—for the Sagart Anemone, like the prudent oyster, retains sufficient water to keep it in luxurious comfort during the ebb of tide—cushioned within its own walls, a pulpy cone of jelly, or gummed and flattened to the rock, like a piece of card, in lazy indolence and apathy. Born to an active bright existence, and reared to remain steady and unmoved amidst the roaring of the waters and the violence of the storm, the Viduata, with the patient calmness and resignation that betokens a well-regulated mind, bears his reverse of fortune and translation to a narrow and circumscribed home with tranquil fortitude, and seldom allows many hours to elapse ere it settles quietly down in some shady corner, if practicable, plumes out its snaky locks, and enjoys the good that is left to it. The placidity of its temper is also manifested in the temperate use of its acontia, or missiles of defence, those tiny white threads—barbed ecthorea—that are coiled up in different chambers—cnidea—of the body, of all classes of Sagartia Anemone, and form such powerful weapons of defence to those who attack or annoy them. My Viduata is not erratic in disposition; for some four months it remained quietly domiciled in a snug corner of its new home without evincing the slightest curiosity to learn anything of its capabilities or its inhabitants beyond what was seemly to its own comfort and dignity; elevating himself sufficiently to dress and expand his flexuous tentacula, or under the shade of semi darkness elongating its slender column some two inches and a half high, and with a modest graceful bend glancing at the world around him. But if silent, our Viduata is without doubt a keen observer; and with a laudable curiosity and that friendliness and sociability that is instinctively characteristic, one morning,—after partaking of a somewhat voracious meal of raw minced mussel, served to him as a Chinaman takes his rice, bit by bit, from the end of a chop-stick, and conveyed by him to his brown lined, wide open mouth, with one of his flexile tentacles, as an elephant conveys food to his mouth by the use of his trunk—was found settled in a new residence, in close proximity to some tiny yellow cup corals (Balanophyllia Regia) and again beside a noble colony of his much-loved Dianthus.
Here where “old faces glimmered through the door, old footsteps trod the upper floors,” invigorated twice a week by, I must own, voracious meals, Viduata lived a pleasant summer life; but as winter approached there had evidently been a midnight conclave and a moonlit flitting, for one morning a new flat-surfaced rock that stood in the centre of the tank was in the firm possession of Viduata, along with a handsome Plumose and two fairy elves of Sphyrodita Sagarts, and there they are now, our Viduata leading a calm, undisturbed life, now and then taking a fit of indolence and sinking down into an apathetic flatness, which none other of the Sagarts can surpass or equal, but whether instinct guides him or the sense of his olfactory nerves arouses him, it is for a naturalist to declare; for place a small piece of mussel on the closed aperture of its body, and after a moment or so, up rises the column, out come the tentacles, and agape goes the mouth like a young fledgling.
ACTINOLOBA DIANTHUS, THE PLUMOSE ANEMONE.
Many years ago, in one of the colonies, when taking luncheon on board an American man-of-war, a young Yankee officer, after amusing me by a multitude of questions about England and the English, exclaimed suddenly:
“Well! you tell me that people would not take off their hats in the streets to a nobleman without they knew something of him personally. I guess I should take off my hat to the Queen of England or the Duke of Wellington if I met them.”
This involuntary republican feeling of respect for excellence and worth ever recurs to me as I watch the queenly Dianthus. Elastic and firm in consistency, with a graceful, smooth, circular column, frequently semi-transparently streaked, capped by a fosse and a membranous frilling of tentacula, and clothed in sumptuous silky hues of pink, creamy white, or translucent neutral-tinted buff, dark grey, olive, or white, the Diver in the Gulf of Charybdis (of Schiller) never brought up a fairer gem. Whether drawn up to its full height, displaying its tentacles dotted on a frilling, and giving a Queen Elizabeth ruff, all puckers and bows—floating with stately grace, its plumosy tentacles for sails, Nautilus fashion—moored to a rock, its column bending gracefully, “queen lily and rose in one;” or with a diadem of marabouts spread out around the fosse—that order of beauty and birth peculiar only to the Actinoloba Dianthus encircling it like a ring, and, by forming a division between the column and the physiognomy—if I may be allowed the expression—proclaiming it fully thereby queen of sea anemones.
The young Dianthus, with the sympathy and love of a tender nature, at once opens and expands to true friendship, and sheds the radiance of its charms and beauty on a new world around him; but, dignified and placid as is the general temperament of this queen of Actinia, those of mature growth, like many beings gifted with reasoning powers, cannot at once submit to a reverse of fortune with that resignation and fortitude which betokens the true nobility of birth and breeding; and frequently many hours elapse after its removal from its ocean home and a senseless cone bestrewed by thready flags of distress (acontia) alone tells of our queen of the castle. But, with “self-renunciation life begins,” thinks the noble anemone, as she slowly rises like a mermaid from the deep, and spreads out her golden hair, glancing proudly but benignantly around her, dining or breakfasting, as the case may be, with luxurious comfort but not voracious appetite, and appearing, later in the day, in the transparent silken robes and courtly plumes that betoken her birth and race—a tribute of gratitude which all the Sagartian Anemones render for their food, most of them appearing in their best and loveliest robes and forms after a hearty meal.
Shall I say that my Plumose loves with passionate strength? For, if slow in making new friendships, like the true and warm hearted, it puts forth all its best energies with sterling reality when once it does become attached, suffering its very fibres to be torn and lacerated ere it can wrench itself away, or be persuaded to move, when necessity requires a change of scene or position. And, like one whose life has not been in vain, and being “dead yet speaketh,” the bit of fibre left behind buds and expands, and, after a few days, a miniature Plumose delights us with its saucy, feathery face, begins to eat and grow apace, and daily tells us of her who was once there. Slow to anger, and consequently sparing in the use of its acontia, and dearly loving the society of its own kith and kin and a few select and chosen acquaintances, for it is seldom or ever quite alone, the Actinoloba, although apparently delicate in looks, is of so vigorous and healthy a constitution that it can stand the vicissitudes of life with greater fortitude than many others of the Sagartian race; and I can but persuade myself that, seated on its stone ottoman, in its aqueous drawing-room, surrounded by those it loves, or comfortably stretched in a horizontal position with ample room and a pure atmosphere, that, in spite of captivity, the Actinoloba Dianthus of the aquarium are a tolerably happy, satisfied race of beings.
SAGARTIA SPHYRODITA, THE SANDALLED ANEMONE.
Surely, if that charming creation, Ariel, sang, “In a cowslip-bell I lie,” the mermaids, Lorelei, or nixies—I don’t know which are the tiniest—must have found as dainty a couch in the tiny bells of the Sagartia Sphyrodita, a pretty little fairy sea anemone, with a white calyxed-shaped column, streaked transparently, and just tipped in the yellow disced with a warm brown tint, yellow or white disc and mouth, and opaque white tentacles, with a shading into purple where they join the disc, and the ensemble so closely resembles Burns’ “bonny gem,” the field-daisy, that, nestled in some sea grass, or ulva, or gracefully pendent from the satiny fronds of Iridēā Edulis, or penni-nerved Delessaria, and it is difficult to believe that it is not a meadow flower, but a sentient being, with a temper as easily put out and as easily appeased as a child’s, “and, like the young lions, seeking its meat from God.”
Our first acquaintance with Sphyrodita began on a lovely summer day when the spring-tide had sent the tired waters to sigh and sleep so quietly, that I had grown oblivious, and was so engrossed in culling the treasures of a rock pool, “that slowly from slumber woke the unwilling main, curling and murmuring until the infant waves leaped on his lap,” and I ran a chance of being lured to destruction in some coral grove, when, lo! as I plunged in, and drew a long sighing gasp, with a momentary wish that I had been born a diver duck or sea-gull, that could ride the bosom of the ocean instead of having to furrow through it like a plough, a frond of “Fucus Serratus,” freighted with some half-dozen of these sprites of the waves, came drifting towards me, and at once perceiving that chance had given me a prize, I gave all but a shout of Eureka! as I grasped them, and with the enthusiasm of an Archimedes went bounding through the waters to terra firma again. And in spite of frequently finding colonies of these Sphyrodita snugly domiciled in the niches of perpendicular mud-covered rocks, like so many jewels set in a frame, I cannot but think that, soft as is their construction, and delicate as is their nature under rough treatment, they clearly belong to a hardy nomadic race, “who love to roam o’er the dark sea foam,” for often on turning over the fronds of Rhodomenia palmata, or Fucus, I come upon the pretty brown tipped cups of clinging Sphyrodita.
In their drawing-room home they roll themselves up and sleep as dormice do in cold weather, but with warmth and sunlight they expand their petal-like tentacles, and as flies in summer air, now float on the surface of the water, now gem the fronds of the sea-blooms, hang like blossoms from a spray, or deck the brown rock with life and beauty.
SAGARTIA NIVEA, THE WHITE ANEMONE.
In snug little homesteads in the water-worn holes of shelving limestone, decked from without with shrubby Dasya, gorgeous scarlet “Delessaria sanguinea,” or winged Alata, and “with a flooring of sand like the mountain drift,” or down in the clear deep pools, where Bryopsis and Ceramia, Polysiphonia, Rhodomenia, and green silken Ulva form stately gardens for their pleasure, live a beautiful race of anemones of the high-born Sagartian tribe. To the eyes of the treasure-seeker there affords no fairer sight than Sagartia nivea at home in its native bower, in brownish olive or orange-coloured column, the upper part dotted with suckers, with slender tentacles and rippled disc of opaque white, as it waits with graceful bearing and outspread tentacula “for the meat that will come in due season,” and presents a perfect picture of placid happiness.
But like some individuals, who can judge the mind by the face, the gifted Nivea at our first glance instinctively learns that our appearance bodes no good to him and his. And after some brave attempts to keep up a semblance of its wonted calmness and equanimity—the quivering tentacles alone betraying the terror from within—it slowly but gradually withdraws within its own walls: nor will it surrender its small garrison by gentle persuasion and coaxing. For, like some gallant little band who hold their own against fearful odds, and while each renewed attempt, each blow threatens death, still finds some new resource wherewith to prolong the struggle, so with Nivea, who, cognisant of one of the oldest stratagems of war, from the first attack pours forth such a plentiful supply of acontia, that a natural enemy may be easily persuaded that the ammunition is inexhaustible and beat a retreat. And when nooses and spears—barbed ecthorea—are alike unavailable, the suckers and prehensile base form so powerful a resistance, that ere the poor shaken citadel, completely enveloped in flags of distress, surrenders, it presents such an abject picture of misery and grief, that we feel like a ruthless savage impelled by the irresistible hand of destiny and research to molest these happy people.
And while Nivea is of a leathery construction and sufficiently strong in constitution to live long in a civilised hemisphere, yet it wanders restlessly to and fro, and ever wears the sullen bearing of a prisoner who eats and lives mechanically, rather than the free emigrant who, with his heart in his native land, still grows happy in the present, and if the simile is far-fetched, it is still apt. Nivea reminds one of a poor chained eagle, or a caged skylark who sadly trills—
”We are pressed by heavy laws,
And often glad no more,
We wear a face of joy,
Because we have been glad of yore.”
SAGARTIA ROSEA.
Who would not give the meed of “Pulchræa gentis pulcherrima” to Sagartia rosea, with olive-brown or pinkish-drab column, dark greenish-brown discs, and two or three rows of exquisite satiny, rose-coloured, bluntish tentacles, as its brilliant hue flashes on one’s sight for the first time from within the darkened chamber and sanded couch that it loves best in the limestone rock? The light and warmth from heaven are grateful to its senses, the roar of the waters and the battling of the waves are sweetest music to its ears, and soothingly tranquillising to its comfort in activity or repose. The waifs and strays that fall to its share by the wayside strengthen its vitality, add to its stature, and clothe its whole frame in a thanksgiving to Him “who is I AM, even in the uttermost parts of the sea.” But Rosea is one who brings a mind not to be changed by time; for invite him to your home, and tears at once pour from its satin smooth skin, and the white threads of sorrow and dismay clothe it like a winding-sheet. Gently and firmly you pass the steel chisel under a portion of its prehensile base, and fondly you imagine the castle is surrendering; but “This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I,” says our resolute beauty; and by suckers and every available power it clings, and with the grasp and tenacity of a drowning man holds on to its much-loved home. We gain our end by bringing a portion of the rock with us; but, as La Bruyère says, we obtain our desire when it ceases to be of value to us; for, in spite of its leathery consistency and healthy-looking frame, the fair Rosea is a very Swiss with a mal du pays in our microcosm, and soon, very soon, it fades and droops, and ere long “a silent change dissolves the glittering mass.”
SAGARTIA MINIATA.
I wish I could say that Sagartia miniata is as bashful as the Brittle Star “Ophiocoma,” who, rather than submit to the vulgar gaze of the genus homo, recklessly throws off his arms and legs. I fear Miniata’s is a far stronger passion, for could an arrow from her quiver kill, few would survive who come to seek this pugnacious, cross-grained gentlewoman of her race—as luxuriating in her crystal drop she hangs pendent from the ceiling of her home in the beetling rock, or “sits high smiling in the conscious eye” in an arm-chair in an aqueous parlour, inhabited by queenly Dianthus, Viduata, &c. Various are the colours of Miniata’s column—brownish-red, olive-green, orange or brick-dust, with a plentiful supply of palish suckers adorning the upper half, and disks and tentacles speckled like a bird’s wing, in tints of red, brown, black, white, drab, or velvety-purple—of course differing in different varieties in colouring and marking.
Soft and delicate as Miniata seems in substance and construction, no Sagart is possessed of a stronger or healthier frame, or would live longer in a state of civilisation were it not for its irascible nature.
For like an angry reptile it stands upon the defensive, and is the first to begin the fray. A touch from even a camel’s hair brush, however lovingly given, brings forth a shower of white thready darts, that dangle about its frame afterwards, a miserable example of ungovernable temper—that were it not for the strong interest Miniata cannot fail to excite in its prettily marked garb, and her quiet, well bred manners and simplicity when left to her own devices, I should be inclined to compare her to a scorpion, who sometimes destroys itself by its own venom; for more than once have I known instances of individuals, who, quite healthy at the time, have drooped and died after giving way to a fit of naughty ungovernable passion. By frequently finding Miniata able to come home with me, almost at the first greeting, and without the aid of a chisel or a fragment of her habitation to comfort her, I conclude that she loves to wander amid the garden walks and alleys of her native pools and bowers, as much as she delights in exploring the boundaries and mounting the glassy heights of her new home. With what delicate politeness and reserve she passes the castellated dwellings of her neighbours, avoiding personal contact with the most scrupulous nicety! Although I am bound to add that if by chance a stray hand—tentacle—should touch her in friendly greeting, up goes her back like a Highland terrier, and a tell-tale thread dangling after her proclaims that the civility has only been construed into an insult. Miniata perched upon the heights of the tank, with her straightened column just laved by the water, her tentacles expanded, and prettily begging for a morsel, which she takes and devours with the keen relish and contentment of a frank nature, or seated in the hollow of a pecten or cockle-shell, in peace and quietness—free to come and go as she chooses—like people who have a good position in the world, and the wherewithal to maintain it—Miniata’s little weaknesses can be amiably overlooked, and she moves in her sphere with credit to herself and with sufficient admiration and notice to be considered a very worthy member of society and her face.
SAGARTIA TROGLODYTE, THE CAVE-DWELLER.
Having described the queens and gaily-dressed beauties of our small aqueous society, we come now to tribes who are born in far more lowly situations, and are what we shall term the artisan and rustic population of Sagartia Anemone. Although, let it not be inferred that the forms of the cave-dwellers and the mud are not as interesting and, in cases, as beautiful, as those of their race literally born to a higher or more elevated sphere. For as nature is no respecter of persons, and frequently decks the village belle with the fairness of the lily and the sweetness of the rose—or forms the desert flower, nourished by the dews and sunlight of heaven only, a triumphant rival to the palace exotic—so many a Bellis and many a cave-dwelling Troglodyte is a marvel of delicate loveliness. As is the varieties Rubicunda and Lilacina of Sagartia Troglodyte, with buff-tinted greyish column, longitudinal lines, and pale suckers, rich tinted rose or lilac-coloured tentacles, and a disc varied with black, white, and grey, in “a delicately pencilled pattern that has justly been compared to the mottling of a snipe’s feather” (see Gosse’s book on Sea Anemones), and that always in the normal species, and in many varieties, have at each tentacle foot a mark like the Roman capital letter B; but these are artisans, “coaxed and dandled into eminence.” The normal species of Troglodyte are clothed in tints of buff, grey, black, white, and red; and from the time they come out like buds from the parent stem, little miniature creations from a pin’s head and upwards, who seat themselves on the soft, crumbling sandstone, or in the sand expand their saucy tentacles, and wait with exemplary patience for the morsel that will get a blessing with the rest, they are the architects of their own fortunes; for Troglodyte increases his possessions with his years, and a sandstone specimen who attains a diameter of an inch in column, two inches in the expanse of flower, and two inches and a half in height, may justly be termed a very Cyclops—or more aptly, self-made man of his race. With leathery construction, and constitution vigorous and healthy, Troglodyte is like the genus man, who must be sustained by food, or it will degenerate, and die.
“Ye who are wealthy a lesson learn,
Hear what the blessed Jesus said —
Give us each day our daily bread,
And drive out want from the poor man's shed.”
It seems hard to force Troglodyte to emigrate from his comfortable home, but as he is a classical animal, an island home is, after all, well suited to him; consequently he bears his translation with the calmness and contentment of a mind easily pleased and grateful for small blessings, and lives a settled domestic life, occasionally giving way to a fit of apathy and flatness, but coming out afterwards decked in neatest trimmest attire, and with renewed vigour and appetite, ready to exclaim with Ulysses, “I will drink life to the lees.”
SAGARTIA BELLIS, THE DAISY ANEMOME.
Sagartia bellis, with straight, ungraceful column and flattened disc, dotted, not fringed, with tentacula, in the ensemble resembles a salver on a stalk, without a foot; and in pink and purple column, and disc beautiful in its hues of black, white, grey and blue—in scarlet pencillings and clear brown, white, and pink—or almost wholly white—reminds one of the awkward, stupid clown dressed out in holiday attire, for Bellis is a Sagart who loves the mud, and, like many of our poor brethren, thrives and grows apace in an atmosphere redolent of fumes, to say the least, not grateful to our olfactory nerves; for while there are varieties of the tribe who, like Rubicunda and Lilacina Troglodyte, are beautiful and elegant in form, and dwell in homes where “the pure and clear element gently is laving,” yet the Weymouth Bellis, in yellow wainscot-hued column and black, white, and grey freckled disc, and the Cornish, love to congregate in the slimy mud. Here they and their enormous families of little ones grow sleek and fat, laughing at care and its sister evils, for “He who made all things for His glory” provideth for them. “It is good to be contented,” says Bellis, when you transplant him to a pure atmosphere. “I am cosmopolitan enough to be able to live anywhere, where such life as I have can be;” and so he accepts the morsels that fall to his share—chooses a residence which he seldom changes, gives no trouble, allows his arms to rust in their case, and drinking Lethe, says, “Oh, rest, ye brother mariners, we will not wander more.”
I have many more pets in my microcosm. There are Devonshire Cup Corals, Carophyllia Smithii, who dwell in shelly homes and eat voraciously, but gratefully dress afterwards in white and pink, with, on rare occasions comparatively, a green brooch at their mouth; Balanophyllia Regia, the yellow Ilfracombe Cup Coral, who chokes over his morsel, like the old and toothless; Corynactis viridus, in my opinion but one degree removed from the Sagart Anemones, in sea-green garb, and a fringing of pinkish purple tentacula on footstalks, make pale fair stars to be admired, but clinging to their victims with a grasp that cannot be easily shaken off, and devouring like very cannibals; Serpula contortuplicata, who run up their winding staircases, on fifteen hundred legs, to come and exhibit their gorgeous and truly beautiful scarlet, or scarlet and white, and crimson fans and stoppers, seem to see without eyes, and vanish as quick as lightning. And lastly, there are pretty painted prawns, tame vivacious creatures, who row their pliers at our approach, and beseechingly seek for a “bit piece” with the pertinacity and humour of any black-eyed roving little “Arab” of bonnie Scotland; but for the present I have finished.