‘The Plumose 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): 137mm
    width (print): 86mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
    Description
    Underwater scene showing the plumose anemone (Metridium dianthus, here described by the author as Actinia dianthus) with tubeworms (Serpula vermicularis) and other marine life.

    The author commented in the accompanying text that the anemone was common in Weymouth Bay in Dorset: ‘The principal object in the accompanying Plate, is an expanded specimen of the Plumose Anemone, (Actinia dianthus) of the white variety, attached to an oyster-shell. In the front is a group of Serpula contortuplicata, with their cork-like opercula protruded, and their scarlet fans expanded. They are seated on a Scallop (Penten opercularis); from which also springs a frond of the delicately exquisite Nitophyllum punctulum. Behind the anemone are some tufts of the Sea-grass (Zostera marina).

    Plate 5 from the book The aquarium: an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea, by Phillip Henry Gosse (Van Voorst, London, 1854). Inscribed: ‘Pl.V. P.H.Gosse, delt. Hanhart, Chromo lith. THE PLUMOSE 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
    Credit
    © The Royal Society
    Image number
    RS.10764
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