Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.10763

    ‘The Parasitic Anemone’

    Date
    1854
    Creator
    Nicholas Hanhart (British) , Printmaker
    After
    Philip Henry Gosse (1810 - 1888, British) , Illustrator
    Object type
    Library reference
    41386
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 136mm
    width (print): 85mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
    Description
    Underwater scene showing the parasitic anemone (described by the author as Actinia parasitica accepted taxonomy now Calliactis parasitica) on a whelk shell. The brittlestar Ophiothrix fragilis is shown in the foreground.

    The author commented in the text that he had collected specimens in Weymouth Bay, Dorset: ‘This fine and very distinct species is exceedingly abundant in Weymouth Bay...it is found embracing some univalve shell, which is tenanted by a Soldier Crab...but adults...almost invariably on the great Whelk...’

    Plate 4 from the book The aquarium: an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea, by Phillip Henry Gosse (Van Voorst, London, 1854). Inscribed: ‘Pl.IV. P.H.Gosse, delt. Hanhart, Chromo lith. THE PARASITIC ANEMONE &c.’

    Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) was a populariser of marine biology and an aquarium inventor elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1856.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline