Morning journal and courier., 1891-10-02
SEAL HARBoR-mr. DESERT.


 Anemones.
 Now, do you wish to hear about a squid, known by various names, also as the devil fish. One of the seamen has found live one thrown upon the shore, put it in pail of water and given it to young Carpar c. We. get 8 very large kitchen pan with sea water to. keep the thing alive and observe it by lamp light.
 What singular thing the polypus is. Its body is about foot long, something like other fish, it has no scales, but 8 smooth skin, which takes on many beauti- full colors as irridescent as prismatic col ors, broken or unknown. Its eyes are wonderful for their brightness. As the eagle has a bright, luminous eye, so has this fish. About it's head are half dozen flexible arms with peculiar round disks or suckers on them. Longer than these an- other pair of more slender one with simi- lar suckers on their outer ends. It cap lures it's prey with these, and woe be to it's victim held to it's strange mouth by so many bands. The fish swims backward! Its tail is very peculiar and adapted to that motion, being pointed and widest away from it's end. Those you see preserved in alec hol in museums are of livid disagreeable color, losing all that brilliancy we saw in this one, which, when dead and put into alcohol the next day, lost all its bright hues. The whole length of this specimen was about two feet, rather less. But in tropical seas they do grow to immense size, about which strange stories are given. Once these suckers get fastened on man they stick! An axe or cutlass must sever and than tho fo11nh hao haaf, poisonous. I read about very large one years ago thrown up on the coast of Maine. It's whole length might have been thirty feet or more. It had probably got into the gulf stream and so carried out of it's way and wrecked in storm. In the Peabody Museum is a large model, also many small preserved specimens.
 Now, having disposed of the 'kraken,' think you will be ready to go with Mrs. Baggs and myself to their point west of Dodges Cove and see her natural aquarium. The rocks there are metamorphlc in great variety of color and form. I got very in teresting color studies there, and later on fine ones of the sea breaking about them. Such places are far to seek, and when we get to Mt. Desert we make the most of them. People thought was very busy, sketching day after day and week after week-good reason-a rare chance. But at low tide twelve feet of water less than at high tide, we can get over on that large drift of rocks and find they are not so alto gether jagged and pointed as when took them with the seas foaming all over and about them. Plenty of room for safe foot ing, water in pools here and there, long and wide spaces of more level rocks, and now we have arrived at the marine aquarium. It lies convenient of
 laa ir,f fhn a11C fact long, half as wide and half as deep, very irregular in it's outlines and very curious in the abundance and variety of it's native
 inhabitants. Ever so many of the white
 barnacles on these as we'll as other shore
 rocks that get overfowed. Ever so many
 of the little black mussels, they are so
 thick and close together one almost won
 ders how they get enough to eat, but
 then the waters are ever rising and food ing and bringing it to them fastened as they are by their nature to something, if nothing more than a sea weed, but here to the rocks. Their shells shut tight when the food is out. And now we look down into the very clean and clear little sea of the aquarium and observe it's inhabitants. Besides any barnacles and mussels, there are various sea weeds, some kinds of sponges, and even starfsh. Mrs. B. 'hates the starfsh!''
 They injure her pets, says am welcome to all of them. Here we may find some sea urchins, very interesting little circular dome-like crustaceans all covered with green spines, which they can move this way and that. The eye is on top; think the mouth is in the center of the more fiat ! under surface. The mouth is very curi- ous thing with it's five little white teeth or 1 jaws which hinge inside and open or close ol, recur to my cabinet and take out one over two inches in diameter and half that from top to base. It is beautiful thing bereft of all it's spines, five layer double rows of | white spots where the spines grew, five similar rows of smaller ones, it is pale
 green above and purplish beneath, is very | hollow, fragile and light for it's size. One sees them in the museums from different oceans of different forms, colors and not | only smaller but several times larger than ] this one. got many washed up on the l shores of Sonnet sound after storm and | have given away most of them. A naturalist
 would be amused at my descriptions and l smile at my errors, but I must write of these things as they appear to me, if at all. | I have not chanced at these in Long Island
 sound, but did in Massachusetts bay, Cape Cod, but they seem to grow larger on the ] Maine coast. They can move about.
 Next to these in the aquarium I men, toned the Holothurians. They can adhere
 to the rocks and grow both like plant I and an animal sort of connecting link in creation, passing from one lower stage in existence to a higher one. In appear
 ance they look something like dark green cucumbers, especially such as are irregu-
 lar in shape, and covered with pimples. Not knowing much about them I beg to rafa ir,ta tad fo io information about their nature, capacity for extending their lengths, and even brilliant colors in the Asiatic regions. Those saw were about six inches long, and too much water over them to get very definite ideas of them.
 More curious and interesting still were l the sea anemonies. I think these are al-
 ways attached to the rocks, but perhaps | they can remove along from one place to | another. They were far down and seem- ingly fast to the rocks. In size they are
 about that of tea or coffee cup, and live right on there from year to year. They, l too, have the combined nature of plant l and animal. And now as we watch about
 half dozen there one or another is un- folding and throwing out the membranes about it's round top and mouth and they
 look like the petals of flowers, say of some kind of tulips or peonies not very double.
 They are very like flowers when thus ex- banded, very strange, very out of our or
 dinary experience of vegetable and animal
 life. As 1 said in one paper, they give their name to Anemone cave on the east
 coast beyond Great Head. It is long
 rock cave where the sea goes in and goes
 out, and at low tide can be walked through, and suppose the animonies dwell there in depths of water never emptied, but chang ed at every tide as in this marine acqua-
 rum on the Messrs. Barr and Bogg point. Mrs. B. is an intelligent, cultivated lady,
 who has translated HaechePs work about
 Ceylon and it's most wonderful sea life.
 She shows me copy of the translation,
 a very interesting book. And know she
 found her likings when she found this
 novel marine home full of various things.
 Messrs. B. and B. of Harrisburg, Pa.
 They were preparing to build fine stone
 house on a very desirable site near said
 rocks, and having journey and visited our
 Pacific and intervening region, they delib- erately choose Mt. Desert, the gem of our Atlantic coast, for their summer home, and
 with seven acres of land about them will
 have trees, lawn, etc., and an ever chang
 ing sea to interest them. For varied and
 extended account of sea anemonies, Cham ber's and other cyc1onedias afford very in