Excerpt from A First Lesson in Natural History Have you ever heard of a sea-anemone? Do not fancy, from its name, that it looks any thing like the pretty white or pink Anemones that delight you so much in the woods in spring and yet the sea-anem ones are so called, because, though they are as much animals as Berty's little dog Pinky, or your pussy-cat, they yet have a look like a flower. But this is only when it pleases them to spread out their little bodies, and flaunt all their pretty fringes and, as you will see when I tell you a little more about it, they can shut themselves up, and look as ugly and dull as they please. In this they differ very much from a flower, which can not fold up its leaves and put them away when it likes. It is true that some flowers close at night, and open in the day but it is not because they want to do so, but because the state of the atmosphere causes them to shut and open. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.