ETYMOLOGY, NOMENCLATURE 5 



Iclter from Governor Winthrop of Connecticut in 1670 to the Royal 

 Society of London concerning some strange animals found there, he 

 refers to the sea urchin as an egg-fish or buttonfish. They are also 

 known as sea chestnuts by the English because of their resemblance 

 to the spiny burrs of the chestnut; they are also called sea thistles, 

 needle shells and porcupine stones and, at Plymouth, whore's eggs. The 

 fishermen at Mousehole, in Cornwall, call them zarts, doubtless an old 



Fig. I . Sea urchin and hedgehog, from a woodcut of Edward Forbes, A 

 History of British Starfishes and other Animals of the Class Echinodermata (London, 



1841). 



Cornish word (Trewavas, 1922). Sea urchins are called porcupines, 

 chestnuts, burrs, spikes and whore's eggs by the collectors and fisher- 

 men at Woods Hole, Mass. and at Beaufort, N. C. The French call 

 them chdtaignes de mer (sea chestnuts) and the shells without spines 

 oranges de mer and pommes de mer. The Germans, similarly call them See- 

 Kastanien and See-Apfel. The Genoise call them zincin (Rondelet, 1554). 

 In his Natural History of Chile, Molina (1787, p. 165) describes a black 

 sea urchin. Echinus niger, later called Arbacia nigra or Tetrapygus niger 

 (see Mortensen Monograph II, p. 582) which he says has black eggs and 

 is called the devil's hedgehog, and is never eaten. 



