daylight hours were then devoted to other and 

 more urgent duties), the room reeked with fumes 

 of preserving fluid. And it was then that I learned 

 something of Ophiuroidean anatomy in general, 

 and considerable of the frame and the physiology 

 of A. squamata in particular. I learned in the first 

 place, with the aid of books, the technical names 

 of the various organs and parts of my serpent-star, 

 and all else regarding their functions that is to be 

 obtained from reading. In this manner I came to 

 know that these creatures are somewhat like their 

 far-removed but more familiar relatives, the com- 

 mon starfishes of the shore, in that their bodies are 

 composed of a central disk with five rays, or arms; 

 but, also, they are unlike them in having the arms 

 distinct from the body, that is to say, the arms are 

 not merely prolongations or extensions of the disk. 

 They differ, too, in their method of locomotion. 

 The serpent-star swims or moves by actively wrig- 

 gling its arms; the common starfish progresses at 

 a slow crawl by the alternate movement of hun- 

 dreds of sucker-feet aligned along its under sur- 

 face. No such sucker-feet existed on my animal; 

 the arms were simply lined at the sides with rows 



[56] 



