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The similarity of motion in Families is another subject well worth the consideration of the naturalist: the soaring of the Birds of Prey, the heavy flapping of the wings in the Gallinaceous Birds, the floating of the Swallows, with their short cuts and angular turns, the hopping of the Sparrows, the deliberate walk of the Hens and the strut of the Cocks, the waddle of the Ducks and Geese, the slow, heavy creeping of the Land-Turtle, the graceful flight of the Sea-Turtle under the water, the leaping and swimming of the Frog, the swift run of the Lizard, like a flash of green or red light in the sunshine, the lateral undulation of the Serpent, the dart of the Pickerel, the leap of the Trout, the rush of the Hawk-Moth through the air, the fluttering flight of the Butterfly, the quivering poise of the Humming-Bird, the arrow-like shooting of the Squid through the water, the slow crawling of the Snail on the land, the sideway movement of the Sand-Crab, the backward walk of the Crawfish, the almost imperceptible gliding of the Sea-Anemone over the rock, the graceful, rapid motion of the Pleurobrachia, with its endless change of curve and spiral.
I turned my glass in the direction to which she pointed, and recognised Madame de Marignan! I turned hot and cold, red and white, all in one moment, and shrank back like a snail that has been touched, or a sea-anemone at the first dig of the naturalist. "Does she know you?" asked Josephine. "I I probably that is to say I have met her in society." "And who is the gentleman?"
It is an exercise of imagination to accept an ideal, and his digestive organs reject it, after the manner of the most beautiful likeness of him conjurable to the mind that flowering stomach, the sea-anemone, which opens to anything and speedily casts out what it cannot consume.
The perception that poor Rex wanted to be tender made her curl up and harden like a sea-anemone at the touch of a finger. "Are you angry with me, Gwendolen? Why do you treat me in this way all at once?" said Rex, flushing, and with more spirit in his voice, as if he too were capable of being angry. Gwendolen looked round at him and smiled. "Treat you? Nonsense! I am only rather cross.
Hume had aroused my enthusiasm by telling me that there were endless sea-anemones along the coast; but Providence seemed hostile to my sea-anemone proclivities; for it turned out that what Mrs. Hume understood by sea-anemones was a small, white-flowering weed that grew on the low bluff beside the water.
These jewels studded the drinking cups from which the Vikings drank "Skoal to the Northland!" The starfish were magnificent, of many colors, and one with fifteen arms covered with sharp, gray spines, and underneath pale yellow, fleshy feelers with suckers like a sea-anemone. These were as pliant as rubber in the water, but, when long out, as hard as stone.
A green crab scuttled out of sight under some pebbles; a purple star-fish crept softly from behind a bunch of waving crimson weeds; a sea-anemone opened and shut its living petals; by peering under the shelving rock one could see the dainty shell of a sea-urchin. Polly gazed astonished at the pool's wonders. "It is like fairy-land," she whispered. "I never saw anything so beautiful.
The comparison of the flowers of the coral to a "petite ortie" or "little nettle" is perfectly just, but needs explanation. "Ortie de mer," or "sea-nettle," is, in fact, the French appellation for our "sea-anemone," a creature with which everybody, since the great aquarium mania, must have become familiar, even to the limits of boredom.
She thought it very pretty, but she was surprised when I showed it to her through a magnifying-glass, and told her that it had been made by a very tiny kind of jelly-fish; a plant-animal some people call it, of the same kind as the sea-anemone; and she wondered still more when we found in a book a picture of a coral island, and I told her that such little creatures have been busy ever since the world began, constantly building up the coral-rocks.
Mind you don't touch the animal with the sharp point, though; for the slightest scratch will kill him." Nellie watched Bob with eager attention from the top of the boulder; while Dick held the little tin bucket below the sea-anemone, so as to catch it as soon as it had been separated from the rock.
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