NO. 19.] ECHINODERMS OF CONNECTICUT. 39 



worth in one bed, while another firm suffered a loss of $100,000 

 in " the last two years." 



The report for 1884 states that 11,000 bushels of the pests 

 were caught off Stratford during a period of six weeks, but 

 before the work was completed at least 200,000 bushels of oysters 

 had been destroyed. 



In a paper by Collins on the Oyster Fisheries of Connecticut, 

 an estimate is made that in 1888 the damage to beds in Connecti- 

 cut waters amounted to some $651,500. During that year 42,000 

 bushels of starfish were destroyed. 



Appreciating the ability of the starfish to migrate from one 

 spot to another not far removed, one enterprising firm of oyster 

 growers has sometimes paid a dollar for each bushel of young 

 starfish collected on the shores adjacent to their plantations. 

 Such a procedure is doubtless profitable to all the parties con- 

 cerned; for, when the young starfish are abundant, the dollar 

 is easily earned, and the destruction of so large a number of 

 small starfish as may be contained in a bushel basket — occasion- 

 ally as many as 2,000 very small ones — will undoubtedly reduce 

 the expense of protecting the beds by more than the sum ex- 

 pended. 



Not only is there great destruction of oysters, but other mol- 

 lusks of economic importance, as the clams and mussels, suffer, 

 perhaps, to an even greater proportional extent. The mussel 

 is one of the chief natural food supplies of the starfish, but, as 

 this mollusk is little used commercially in Connecticut, the pe- 

 cuniary loss is not of importance. The injury to the clam, on 

 the other hand, which furnishes an important article of food, is 

 a matter of some real concern to the people of the state. The 

 barnacles, worms, Crustacea, and various gastropod mullusks, 

 from which the starfish derives a portion of its food supply, 

 have little to do with human welfare; and, whenever the star- 

 fish supplements its diet by devouring one of its own kind, or 

 when it feeds upon the mollusk known as the oyster drill, it 

 becomes, for the time being, of distinct service. Likewise, in 

 furnishing a portion of the food supply, either directly or in- 

 directly, of certain fishes used for human food, it compensates 

 to some slight extent for the damage which it causes. 



