olding food. We will use a shorter word and call them feelers. They are
set in circles round the top of the Anemone, and there are many of them.
The Daisy Anemone, for instance, has over seven hundred feelers. Each
feeler can be moved from side to side, and can also be tucked away, out
of sight and out of danger; but, when hungry, the animal spreads them
widely, for, as we shall see, they are the net in which it catches its
dinner.

The whole body of the Anemone is like two bags, one hanging inside the
other. The space between the two bags is filled with water. The feelers
are hollow tubes which open out of this space; so they, too, are filled
with water.

[Illustration: CRUSTACEA.

1. THE LARVA OF A LEAF-BODIED CRUSTACEAN CALLED PHYLLOSOMA.

2. A PRAWN-LIKE CREATURE, SHOWING THE FRONT LIMBS THAT ARE USED FOR
GRASPING PREY.

3. A CRAB.

4. THIS IS A SHRIMP-LIKE CREATURE CALLED CUMA SCORPIOIDES.]

The Anemone can press the water into them, and so force them to open
out. In rather the same way you can expand the fingers of a glove by
forcing your breath into them. The Anemone, you see, can open or close
just as it pleases.

What does it eat, and how does it find food? Perhaps you have watched an
open Anemone in a pool, or in a glass tank, and seen it at its meals. A
small creature swims near, and touches one of the feelers. Instead of
darting away, it appears to be held still; and then other feelers bend
towards it and hold the victim. Then they are all drawn to the centre of
the Anemone, carrying their prey with them; and the feelers, prey and
all, are tucked out of sight.

That is the way the Anemone obtains its food. As soon as the feelers get
hold of a small animal they carry it to the opening of a tube in the
centre. This is the mouth, leading to the stomach. Very often the
feelers, with their victim, are tucked away into the stomach, and the
feelers do not appear again for some time. Is not this a strange way of
eating!

Much stranger still is the way in which the food is held, and made so
helpless that it cannot escape. On the skin of the Anemone there are
many thousands of very tiny pockets, or cells. Each cell contains a fine
thread with a poisoned barb at the tip, The thread is packed away in the
cell, coiled up like the spring of a watch. As soon as anything presses
against the cells they shoot out their threads. Thus the tips of many
poisoned threads enter the skin of any soft animal which is unlu