COLLECTING ON A CORAL REEF 83 



ing intimate acquaintance with uncouth crawling things of the sea, 

 made visible for an hour in their shallow prison pools. Not all un- 

 couth, either, for of marvels of color and pattern, bizarre and beautiful, 

 there was never lack. 



In echinoderms, that is, star fishes, brittle stars, sea-urchins and sea 

 cucumbers, the Samoan reef is very rich. I think we took some two 

 dozen species. An abundant star fish is ultramarine blue, with slender, 

 smooth-surfaced rays. A curious large, reddish-brown, ugly-seeming 

 kind has heavy coarse spines an inch or more long, scattered over it, 

 and these spines sting. Many specimens of the brilliant blue star fish 

 were found with arms slightly or badly mutilated, but all regenerating. 

 I have some specimens by me now which show that even a part of a 

 single arm can regenerate all the rest of the body, that is, a new disc 

 and four new arms besides the remainder of the single mutilated arm. 



Of slender-rayed brittle stars there are brown and green and mottled 

 sorts, some with white cross bands on each arm, and all with the fragile 

 arms breaking away with the least roughness in handling. Often 

 merely the contact with the preserving fluids seems to be sufficient for 

 a general epidemic of arm-shattering. Among the sea urchins a kind 

 with very slender, long, almost needle-like spines is abundant. These 

 spines are not only sharp, but stinging, and often a warning tingle told 

 the exploring hand in crevice or pool bottom of the presence of this 

 well-protected little urchin. Another slender-spined sort has white 

 bands around each spine, so that the thickly beset body is black-and- 

 white barred. A larger kind has its heavy spines each encircled by two 

 or three rings at small distances apart. Still a larger species shows 

 heavy, thick, blunt spines much like miniature baseball bats. 



We were not the only sea-urchin collectors on the reef. With each 

 low tide would come forth a score or more of natives, mostly half-clad 

 women and children, who would wade about in the shallow water of the 

 reef and among the scattered pools collecting choice tit-bits for an eve- 

 ning feast. Among these morsels a certain sea-urchin seemed to be 

 favorite. Often the collectors could not restrain their appetites and 

 would crack open the brittle tests, and suck out and swallow raw some 

 choice inner part. 



The sea-cucumbers were very abundant; they lay scattered over the 

 whole reef top, in some places one to every square foot. A large green- 

 ish-black form about ten inches long, with four-sided body, and un- 

 usually firm body wall with short blunt tubercles ; a soft-skinned dark- 

 brown form about six inches long when not extended, but capable of 

 great extension, found between tide lines under stones; and a small 

 spotted brown and white kind three to four inches long, were the three 

 most abundant species; but several other kinds were common, among 

 them a small black knobby sort, the real beche de mer of the Samoans. 



