190 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



fitter English name can be found for it, that it may 

 be called a Basket -fish, or a Purse-net-fish. This 

 elaborate piece of nature we may call Piscis Echino- 

 stellaris visciformis ; its body resembling an Echinus 

 or Egg-fish the main branches a star and the 

 dividing of the branches the plant Misseltoe. It 

 spreads itself from a pentagonal root into five main 

 limbs or branches, each of which, just at the issuing 

 out from the body, subdivides itself into two; and 

 each of the ten branches thus formed does again 

 divide into two parts, making twenty lesser branches ; 

 and each of these doth again divide into two smaller 

 branches, making in all forty ; these again divide into 

 80, and those into 160, and they again into 320. 

 The division is again repeated, making 640 ; after- 

 wards 1280, 2560, 5120, 10,240, 20,480, 40,960; and 

 at the fourteenth division, beyond which the farther 

 expansion could not be certainly traced, there were 

 81,920 small tendrils or threads, in which the 

 branches of this star-fish terminate." 



The shell of the Asterophyton, which is harder than 

 that of the Echinus, is entirely covered with a thick 

 fleshy envelope. Erom the circumference of the disc 

 proceed five strong rays, each of which soon divides 

 into two secondary trunks, and these, subdividing 

 again and again, always by binary division, soon be- 

 come multiplied into innumerable branches, which, 

 like living ropes, spread out all around the body of 

 the animal. Every one of these rays is made up 

 of an immense number of jointed pieces, so that they 

 are as flexible as whip-cord, and as manageable as 

 the legs of a spider ; and each of these innumerable 



