DWELLERS OF THE SURF 119 



festering wounds difficult to sterilize. Often the spines are 

 barbed and very brittle, breaking off where they enter the 

 flesh. One such injury in the fleshy part of my leg gave me no 

 end of trouble until I dissected it out with a scalpel; even then it 

 required more than a week to heal. The under sides of their 

 barbed and pointed bodies are literally a mass of feet, strange 

 sucker-like affairs arranged in symmetrical rows radiating from 

 the round centrally located mouth. By means of these they 

 progress slowly from place to place, advancing by a series of 

 wavy rhythms. These tube-feet are capable of considerable 

 contraction and expansion and no matter how uneven the sur- 

 face on which they rest, they have a firm grip on the ground at 

 every point. Thus they are able to cope with the surf, staying 

 firmly in place while the water bubbles and roars over them. 

 Sea urchins are considered to be but stupid automatons, head- 

 less creatures without a thought or flicker of intelligence. This 

 is literally true, for they are the original scatterbrains. The only 

 nervous system they enjoy is distributed in a series of ganglia 

 in a circle about their spherical bodies. Thus the sea urchin 

 functions because its gangUa are stimulated by its moving parts. 

 One moving part generates activity in its neighbor; the animal is 

 managed by its own activity. It might be said that the essential 

 difference between an animal with a brain and one without, as 

 for example, a dog and a sea urchin, lies in the fact that a dog 

 moves the legs, in a sea urchin the legs move the animal. But 

 be this as it may I could not help admiring the manner in which 

 these living cockleburs had carved a niche for themselves in 

 the face of terrific odds. Any animal that can survive in a 

 world of crashing surf while managing several hundred separate 

 feet at once, brainless or not, is a creature of no small attain- 

 ments. Most of us have trouble enough at times managing two. 

 How very wonderful these sea urchins were I did not know 



