Sea Anemone And Barnacle

The sea anemona is very sensitive It aloses at a hostile or thoughtlest touch, not rapidly, for it can't do anythiug very rapidly, but as rapidly as ií can, curling its tentacles inward ano covering tbein over with its outer skin and flattening it down upon the rock. But it is not disturbed by its friends. In one of the smaller glass tanks at the oity's aquarium at Castle Garden there are several little sea anemones taken f rom spiles and stones about the Battery. In the same tank, alruost within reach of these anemones, are some common bar:acles - little ones, half an inch or so in diameter. Lacking iu beauty as the baruacle may be, it is provided witb a most wonderful handlike member, which it throws up from its shell, with which it sweeps the water for fcod, the minute animalculae upon which it feeds. One of these barnacles is so close to one of the little anemones that when he flings bis net it almost or quite touches the tips of the anemone's tentacles, which spread like the most delicate and feathery branches of the tiuiest little tree. But the anemone doesn't close up. Not a bit. Here down deep in the tank its branches wave in the gently agitated water, as, delicate as they are, tbey might do in the gentlest zephyrs on the land, and they wave and wave as the baruacle throws its net. Perhaps the sea anemone has its owu benefit in inind through all this, for it is quite probable that the agitation of the water brings to it food that it might not otherwie receive; but, however that may be, the fact remains that the little anemone that would close at the slightest touch of an enemy is quite nndisturbéd by any thing that its frieud aud ncighbor the barnaole might