THE OYSTER-INDUSTRY. 229 



proceeded with too rapidly fo wait for the slow action of the stomach acids upon the carbonate of lime in the shell ; 

 and the vital parts of the mollusk are too far inward and sluggish to be promptly affected by any such acids. 

 Moreover, it seems unnecessary, since the appearance of every shell attacked at once suggests a breaking down, 

 chipping-off movement, which the startish might easily produce, by seizing and suddenly pulling down with the 

 suckers nearest the mouth, or by a contra(!tion of the elastic opening of the stomach. 



At any rate, the thin edge of the shell is broken away, un; il an entrance is made, which the occupant has no way 

 of barricading. Then the burglar protrudes into this entrance the distensible mouth of his stomach, until it can 

 seize upon the body of the mollusk. The consumption of this begins at once, and as fast as the poor oyster's or 

 ■scallop's body is drawn within its folds, the capacious stomach is pushed farther and farther in, until at last, if the 

 mollusk be a large one, the pouches that I have described as packed away in the cavities of the rays, are also 

 drawn forth, and the starfish has substantially turned himself wrong side out. If he is dredged up at this stage, 

 as many examples constantly happen to be, and dragged away from his half-eaten prey, his stomach will be found 

 hanging out of the center of his body for a distance, perhaps, equal to half the length of one of the arms, and tilled 

 with the juices of the oyster he has devoured, and whose body, within the shell, will be found almost as squarely 

 trimmed as could have been done by scissors. If put very gently into a bucket of salt water, and left in peace, 

 the startish will straighten himself out, and slowly retract his extruded abdomen, as he woidd have done after his 

 meal was digested, had he been undisturbed ; but if the least violence is used he will s])urtoutthe liquid contained 

 in the distended pouch, and quickly draw it back into his body. As a rule, however, the angry fisherman does not 

 have patience for these experiments. This process is the one followed in the case of large sized mollusks. Very 

 young oysters and other small prey are enveloped in the stomach, shell and all. The gastric juice then kills and 

 dissolves out the soft parts, and the hard crust is thrown away by the eversion and withdrawal of the stomach. 



Difficulty of destroying the starfish. — When oysters first were cultivated along the American coast, 

 and this enemy first became known, the oystermen used to save all that they caught in their tongs and dredges, 

 and pile them in a corner of their boats until evening. Then they would collect them into small packages and draw 

 a cord around each lot tightly enough to cut through it. This done, the remnants were cast overboard and 

 considered done for. But this was entirely a mistake, as was presently found out. Five out of six of these 

 fragments not only retained life, but renewed the lost parts and became active again. Thus, instead of diminishing 

 - the pest these men were directly increasing it, since they were making two or three new starfishes out of each 

 ca pti ve. It was a case of multiplication by division, which may be an invariable paradox in mathematics, but is by 

 no means always one in zoology. 



Starfishes often lose one or more of their rays, but reproduce them. Forbes figures one, where four out of the 

 five arms had been broken oft' in some way, and had just begun to be replaced by the little stubs of new growth. 

 This gave the animal, with one full-sized limb, the shape of a spike headed bludgeon. Indeed, th re are certain 

 members of the family, found in all seas, known as Opldurans, or snake-armed sea-stars, which are liable to commit 

 apparent suicide, hurl themselves all to pieces, the instant they are disturbed. This habit belongs, also, to a few 

 larger forms, but, so far as I am aware, is never practiced by any of our familiar American starfishes, who seem to 

 prefer to take their chances rather than voluntarily fling away their limbs. This fragility and spitefnluess of 

 certain of the starfishes is humorously described by Forbes, in his account of one large Briti.sh seven-armed species, 

 the " lingthorn ", or Liiidia frarjiUissima. Having been cheated out of a previous specimen by its breaking itself to 

 pieces, Mr. Forbes took with him on his next collecting expedition, a bucket of cold fresh water, to which article 

 starfishes have a great antipathy. " As I expected," he says, " a Luidia came up in the dredge— a most gorgeous 

 specimen. As it does not generally break up before it is raised above the surface of the sea, cautiously and 

 anxiously I sunk my bucket to a level with the dredge's mouth, and proceeded in the most gentle manner to 

 Introduce Luidia to the purer element. Whether the cold air was too nnich for him, or the sight of the bucket too 

 terrific, I know not, but in a moment he proceeded to dissolve his corporation, and at every mesh of the dredge his 

 fragments were seen escaping. In despair I grasped at the largest, and brought up the extremity of an arm with 

 its terminating eye, the spinous eyelid of which opened and closed with something exceedingly like a wink of 

 derision." 



Now that I have spoken of the "britth -stars," as the Ophiurans are well called, I may as well quote ^It. Forbes' 

 account of the trouble they give on the French and English coasts, which entitles them to a place iu this essay on 

 an enemy of the shellfisheries. He remarks : 



The common brittle-star often congregates in great nnmljers on the edges of sciillop-ljanks, and I liave seen a large dredge come 

 np completely filled with them; a most curious sight, for when the dredge was emptied, these little creatures, writhing with 

 the strangest contortions, crept about in all directions, often flinging their arms in broken pieces .around them, and their snake-like and 

 threatening attitudes were by no means relished by the boatmen, who anxiously .isked permission to shovel them overboard, supersLiI iously 

 remarking "the things weren't altogether right". Rondletius » » • says they prey on little shells and crabs. They constitute a 

 favorite article of diet iu the codfish's bill of tare, and great numbers of them are often found iu ihe stomach of that fish. 



Starfishes are rarely found dwelling upon a muddy bottom, nor do they like clean sand very well. Upon the 

 mud it is difficult for them to move about, and the open, smooth sand holds little food, and is likely to be shifted by 

 a storm too quickly for them to escape being buried. Their home, then, is chosen on rocky coasts, where submerged 



