2-914-103 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sea Anemones in the Gardens of the Zoological Society, Regent's-Park, 1854. Aquatic life at London Zoo. 'From the...background rises up a tall, massive, furrowed stem - from four to six inches high, and of proportionate circumference, crowned, palm like, with a tuft of multitudinous tentacles, reminding us of some grotesque vegetable production of the river-banks of Australia...It reminds us of the head of Medusa, with its tresses of convoluted snakes...Sea Anemones, if carefully disengaged from the rocks to which they adhere by a basal sucker, may be put into a bowl of sea-water (renewed daily), and will live for a considerable time - affording an object of the highest interest...they will take food freely, swallowing crabs and shell-fish, marine insects, and small fishes...Their mode of taking food is by enfolding it in their rainbow-tinted arms and gradually forcing it into the mouth...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.