228 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



superstitions attached to tbem by sea-faring men, who are so ready to invest with some supernatural quality 

 every strange product of that mystery of mysteries, the sea, whose iuscrutability and might impress him with 

 supernal power, and excite his wonder more and more the longer he is acquainted with its majesty, its moods, and 

 its inhabitants. 



Forbes records that at Scarborough the fishermen call the big Asterias aurantiaca, a very destructive species, 

 the "butt horn". "The first taken," he says, "is carefully made a prisoner, and placed on a seat at the stern of 

 the boat. When they hook a < but' (halibut) they immediately give the poor starfish its liberty, and commit it to its 

 native element ; but if their fishery is unsuccessful it is left to perish, and may eventually enrich the cabinet of 

 some industrious collector." 



In Ireland, it appears, the folk-lore of this subject is more grum. " The starfishes are called at Bangor (County 

 Down) the DeviVs finycrfi, and the DeciVs hands, and the children have a superstitious dread of touching them. 

 When drying some in the little garden behind my lodgings, I heard some of them on the other side of the hedge 

 put the following queries : ' What's the gentleman doing with the bad man's hand I Is he ganging to eat the bad 

 man's hand, do ye think ?'" 



Not a superstition, but an entire error was the belief, which I find still existing in the United States, that the 

 starfish will poison painfully, if not fatally, the hand of any one touching it. Our oystermen know better; but I 

 can tell them that the belief is very old. Pliny, who lived during the first century of the Christian era, asserted 

 that starfishes " can burn all they touch ". This proves he took hearsay evidence, which a naturalist is never safe 

 to do, and did not handle them himself to see. Aldrovandus and Albertus, who wrote a few centuries later, followed 

 his same love of the marvelous, in spite of common sense and easy proof to the contrary, and told their credulous 

 readers concerning these creatures, that " their nature was so hot they cooked everything they meddled with". 

 Possibly we may find here the origin of the stew, the roast, the take-home-a-fry-in-a-box, which otherwise remains 

 very obscure. Finally, some outdoor students came along, picked up starfishes, found them harmless, and freed 

 the foolish old tomes that called themselves " natural histories ", but constantly set nature aside for the marvelous 

 and absurd, from one more taint upon the name of observer. 



The tale did not wholly lose its hold upon the minds of the ignorant, however; and even the learned sought 

 until lately to prove that there was some sort of an acrid fluid discharged by the skin of the animal. This false 

 idea arose, perhaps, from confounding the starfish with the various Medma, or jelly-fishes, which are also 

 sometimes called "crossfishes" ; or, possibly, it is merely an outgrowth of the attempt to account for the insidious 

 destructiveness of the five-finger, which for a long time was misunderstood. 



How A STARFISH KILLS AN OYSTEE.— lu Bostou, last winter, one of the oldest oyster-dealers and planters 

 there, gravely instructed me in the manner a starfish attacks his victim. 



" Crawling round the bottom," he explained, " the star accidently gets afoul a bed of oysters. He don't know 

 what they are, mebbe, but there they all lie with their shells a-gapin', after the nature of oysters. Poking round 

 amongst 'em he accidently, as it were, gets the end of one of his arms into an open shell, and the oyster of course 

 shuts down on him. Now, sir, he can't get away, but the oyster can't live but a little while with its shell open, and 

 alter a few hours he is dead. Then he lets up and the star makes a meal ofi' him right there— takes him on the 

 half-shell in his own gi"avy, as it were." 



This is the first and last time I ever heard an American talk this nonsense, though many have expressed an 

 ignorance of the whole matter, which was no credit to their eyesight; but in reading Prof. Edward Forbes' British 

 Starfishes lately, where he mentions the cripples so frequently taken among starfishes, I find the following paragraph: 



The oystermen believe that it loses its rays in consequence of its oyster-hunting propensities, that it insinuates an arm into the 

 incautious oyster's gape, with the intent of whipping out its prey, but that sometimes the apathetic mollusk proves more than a match 

 for its radiate enemy, and closing on him holds him fast by the protieied finger; then the crossfish, preferring amputation and freedom to 

 captivity and dying of an oyster, like some defeated warrior, finding 



" The struggle vain, he flings his arms away 

 And safety seeks in flight." 



This story has long been believed. Link gives a vignette representing the mode of attack, with the motto " sic struit insidias". 



Everybody who knows anything about it understands now, of course, that all this is absurd. The starfish goes 

 about his foraging in a much more effective and sensible way. Indeed, he excels almost any other animal worth 

 calling one, in economy of exertion in eating, since to secure, swallow, and digest his food is all one operation, when 

 once he is inside the shell. 



Having met with an oyster, scallop, or other thin-shelled mollusk — and young ones are preferred because their 

 armor is weak — the starfish folds his five arms about it in a firm and deadly grasp. Then protruding the muscular 

 ring at the entrance of his stomach through the circular opening in the center of the under-side of the disk, which 

 I have described, he seizes the thin, newly grown, posterior edge of the shell, which oystermen call the " nib" or 

 "bill", and little by little breaks it off. It has been surmised that the gastric juice decomposed the edge of tlie 

 shell, until an opening was effected ; or, entering, paralyzed the mollusk, until he relaxed the muscle which held the 

 protecting valves together. But I do not think either of these suppositions supported by fact. The operation is 



