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 unlucky
enough to touch an Anemone.

If your own skin is tender, these little stinging hairs will irritate
it, but not enough to hurt you. It is different, however, with the small
creatures of the sea. They are made quite helpless when caught by
hundreds of these strange threads. We shall find similar poison-threads
in the Jelly-fish; and these, in some cases, can cause us serious
illness. You cannot see them without the aid of a microscope.

All those parts of its food which the Anemone cannot digest, it throws
out again. If you feed an Anemone on raw meat, it tucks the pieces into
its mouth, and, some days after, throws out the hard part of the meat,